








.^^-^ 




'^ *^ -♦^^ 











^0" 



"q*. ".M'' ^0 



.^ ... 






' °- /^'J^i^^S^ /^'^ii>- y>:r^'X 












-<v *o 



^<>* .^' 







-IV %*« 



6. '*rr,**\.o'^ 













9^ .-^% ^-^ 



^^^/♦^^o**.^-^^^ 






.* . V 
























« o > 














V .^'.- '^^ 



o • * 



\/ .• 







J?'*, 







• 



P^.^J^nL'* "> 
















.♦ r>0 







4q 






\,v ^ 



5*. .•-.*'•. 



**. ''^■■' .«*' 
























^^. 









vf^' 






v%* 

















^oV" 



^^-n^ 




0* 









^0^ 




9^ *"■>' ^ 









-^^d^ 















r^^ 




^^.c.*^" ; 



'r ^ ♦ •* 







1 V<V^ 























■.• .'^^"-% 







^o/ - 



V N<» •» 



^.l^A 



; ^^-n. 







';*-o^ 






v**::^^\^^' 










b '.rr,-* .o'^ ^^^ 











k..^"" ym^^ x.^^ ; 









/./^"^•.^K^^^^^^ 



D^ o«-**. "^o 



o. *'7vr» A 




^^0^ 



0" .•:tfsss>^% -o 4 



A> ,v.., ^^ 



• » - ,0^ ^ 



V K^^^-*^. '. 









>^ ^o'-". 









.^^^vr. 















I 
L I T E 11 A R Y 






CRITICISMS 



OTHER PAPERS. 



BY THE LATE 

HORACE BINNEY WALLACE, ESQUIRE, 

OF PHILADELPHIA. 



j^.nr. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
P A R E Y & M m I L L A N, 

SUCCESSORS TO A. HART, late CARET & HART. 
18 5 6. 



c, US' 



)^9 



IgiTfi 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

PARRY & McMillan, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

STEREOTTPED BY OEORGE CHABLES. PRINTED BY T. K. k P. G. COLLINS. 



.W':,\ 



GEORGE P. MORRIS, 



THE TONES OF WHOSE LYRE HATE WAKED, IN FOREIGN LANDS, A RESPONSE FROM 



" Those chords of peryading Nature, 
"Which fraternize multitudes of differing nations; 



AND OF WHOM THE AUTHOR OF THESE WRITINGS SAYS: 

" Search the wide world over, and jou shall not find among the literary men 
of any nation, one on whom the dignity of a free and manly spirit sits with a 
grace more native and familiar : whose acts, whether common and daily, or 
deliberate and much considered, are wont, at all times, to be more beautifully 
impressed with those marks of sincerity, of modesty, and of justice, which form 
the very seal of worth in conduct;" 

THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 

BY THE EDITOR, 



" Tell Mr. H. B. Wallace I am proud of his praise. He is one of the few 
in this our day and generation, who can appreciate the solution of a black 
letter question." — Letter of Chief Justice Gibson, of Pennsylvania, July 1, 1851. 



^ Je dois maintenant achever cette preface en dSplorant la catastrophe excep- 
tionnelle qui me priva recemment d'un dminent disciple, destine, sans doute, 
a devenir I'un des meilleurs appuis du positivisme. En signalant, dans la 
preface du volume precedent, la digne adhesion d'un noble citoyen de Phila- 
delphie, j'6tais loin de preroir qu'une fatale maladie allait m'enlever Wallace, 
^ I'ago de trente-cinq ans. 

Quoique nos relations se soient bornSes a trois entretiens decisifs, sgparSs 
par une correspondance aussi courte que precieuse, elles m'ont permis de juger 
la perte que fait en lui I'Humanite. D'apres un rare concours eutre le coeur, 
I'esprit, et le caractSre, il devait puissamment seconder la difficile transition 
rSservee au dix-neuyieme siecle. Esempte de toute affectation, sa culture 
speculative, tant esthetique que scientifique, correspondait pleinement a sa 
belle organisation. Mais ses confidences spontanees m'autorisent a penser, 
malgre les essais litteraires de sa jeunesse, qu'il se serait surtout illustre par 
la vie active, dans un pays oil les grands citoyens prevalent sur les magistrats. 
J'ose resumer sa veritable appreciation en le comparant au plus 6minent des 
hommes d'Etat am6ricains. * * * * 

Chaque fois que je vols ainsi disparaitre, avant le temps, un etro vraiment 
superieur, je dSplore la fatale impuissance de I'Humanite contre les lois ex- 
terieures qui lui ravissent ses meilleurs organes. Quoique I'influence subjec- 
tive perpgtue les services objectifs, elle n'empechera jamais de sentir que 
nous fdmes prives de Bichat, de Vauvenargues, de Bellini, etc., sans avoir pu 
subir leur principal ascendant. — Auguste Comte. Pref, vol. Seme, dn Systeme do 
Politique Positive, p. xvii. 

"Horace Binney Wallace, of Philadelphia, is a son of the late John B. 
Wallace, and nephew of Mr. Binney. He is a young man of as much ability 
and power as any I know. His father was one of my best, warmest, truest 
friends. He died eight or nine years ago. I have cultivated the acquaintance 
of this son, and if I had the power I would most cheerfully bring him into 
public service." — Letter of Daniel Webster to Hiram Ketcham, of Neio York, 
February 22, 1849. 



ADVERTISEMENT 



The papers which are contained in this volume are the pro- 
ductions of a young man, whose career was terminated in a 
foreign country, at the age of thirty-five. Much of the last year 
of his life had been occupied in the pursuit of health. He had 
previously passed a considerable time in foreign travel, and when 
at home and while discharging, with remarkable interest and fide- 
lity, all the duties of his social and civil station, had been a con- 
stant laborer in his profession, the law, to which science he had 
contributed some of the best known and most authoritative pub- 
lications which American Jurisprudence now owns. A volume, 
entitled "Art, Scenery and Philosophy in Europe," was pub- 
lished in 1855, from manuscripts found in his port-folio at Paris, 
after his death ; but, as a literary writer, he was not during his 
life-time ever publicly known, nor at all willing to be known. 
No one of the papers, printed since his death, was ever acknow- 
ledged by him in any way ; and outside of his profession every 
thing that he either wrote or printed was given off by him in 
the most pei-ishable form, and without the least idea of ever 
claiming or acknowledging it himself, or of its being at any 
time presented by others as his. These facts are proper to be 
stated in order that the reader may understand the true relation 
of Mr. Wallace, to what is here presented as the production of 
his pen. It is probable that occasional passages in the present 
volume ought not to be regarded as the completed or final ex- 
pression of his judgment : and it is certain, from what has been 
already said, that he did not regard any of the pieces as a satis- 
factory expression of literary etlbrt. Many of them, as will be 
seen by the indication placed at the head of each page were 
written at the age of twenty-one or below it, and were merely 
tentative ; " the flights of a noble bird for the first time essaying 
his own wings." Indeed his life, up to its close, seemed to have 
been one chiefly of study and preparation : and it was one of 
1 ' (v) 



Vi AL»\^EIITISEMENT. 

the sad circumstances connected witli his death, that his fine 
powers seem to be arranging themselves, with confidence in their 
own strength, for great, sustained, and systematic labor in the 
departments of literature, philosophy and politics, when they 
were paralyzed at their source. 

The pieces, it will be perceived, are different in extent and 
character. Several of them are fragmentary. A few have been 
printed in an ephemeral and limited form. Of these several 
were designed as expressions of friendly feeling to literary men 
of our country who are the subjects of them, and who till now, 
it is probable, have never known, except as they may have in- 
ferred it from internal evidence, the pen from which they came. 
Some were contributions, spontaneous or solicited, to the enter- 
prises of unfriended merit seeking subsistence in the scanty 
fields of our native literature : A few have appeared in news- 
papers or other journals, the editors of which, while generally 
ignorant of their soiirce, were usually impressed by the genius 
whose stamp they bore : And the residue appear to have been 
written chiefly in obedience to that law which declares that 
" genius will labor." "He wrote and thought," said one of the 
guides and exponents of the best public opinion in Philadel- 
phia,* in speaking of Mr. Wallace after his death, " with the 
most unselfish indifference to the immediate results to his own 
fame or fortune. To a limited circle of his personal and pro- 
fessional friends and of people who detected his unusual intelli- 
gence even in its retirement, was he known : and it was only 
after his death, when the admiration of these was expressed 
along with their grief, that the public at large discovered that a 
man of extraordinary talents had been born and bred among 
them." 

The "Art, Scenery and Philosophy" already referred to, and 
the volume now printed, form but a small part of Mr. Wallace's 
literary productions. Other portions of them, along with parts 
of his correspondence, may hereafter, it is possible, be communi- 
cated to the public. 

Philadelphia, February 26^/i, 1856. 

* " The Evening Bulletin," November 25, 1854 



LITERARY CRITICISMS. 



The Prose Writers op America: with an Introductory Survey of the 
Intellectual History, Condition, and Prospects op the Country : 
with Portraits from Original Pictures. By Rupus Wilmot Griswold. * 
Second edition. 

No man is more deserving of the public gratitude tlian he who 
teaches a nation to respect itself. A proper confidence in one's 
own standards, in one's own judgment, and in one's own abilities, 
is so important for the full development of intellectual capacity, 
and social dignity and happiness, and moral power, that it ought 
to be considered a duty of every one who holds the place of a 
guide or teacher to implant and cultivate it in the subjects of his 
care, whether communities or individuals. Personal or national 
vanity, indeed, may become even bloated upon the contempt and 
ridicule of the rest of the world ; but an honorable self-depend- 
ence, a manly self-reliance, can be inspired only by contemplating, 
as external, the monuments of one's own character and ability, 
or by seeing that others regard them with esteem and deference 
and admiration. For either purpose, of enabling the literary 
genius of the country to know itself, objectively, or of causing 
other countries, to receive the complete impression of its power, 
we hold such efforts as have been made by Mr. Griswold to be 
of great value. He has done a useful work, and he has done it 
well. The book now before us is more than respectable ; it is 

* This volume, greatly enlarged and improved by the numerous editions 
through which it has passed since the present notice of it was written, now 
forms part of a series of works, comprising, with it, " The Poets and Poetry," 
and " The Female Poets of America," and likely to do honor to our country, 
under the title of " A Survey of American Literature." — Ed. 

(3). 



4 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 30. 

executed ably, and in many parts brilliantly. In some respects 
it is au extraordinary work ; such as few men in America, per- 
haps, besides its author, could have produced, and he only after 
years of sedulous investigation, and under many advantages of 
circumstance or accident. He has long shown himself to be of 
Cicero's mind : '^Mihi quiclem nulli satis erudito videntur, qui- 
bus nostra ignota sunt.'''' The distribution of the various writers 
into their classes, and the selection of representatives of each 
class or type, exhibit much skill. Many passages present fine 
specimens of acute, original and just criticism, eloquently deliv- 
ered. We diifer from Mr. Griswold sometimes, but never with- 
out a respect for his judgment, and never without feeling that we 
owe it to the public in all cases to give a reason why we do not 
assent to the conclusions of so candid and discriminating a judge. 
We acknowledge Mr. Griswold to be a good critic ; and if his per- 
sonal friends or others claim for him the title of a writer of first- 
rate merit, we make no other hesitation than that we have not yet 
seen quite enough of original matter from his pen. " The strength 
of the eagle," says Mr. Hallam, "is to be measured, not only by 
the height of his place, but by the time that he continues on the 
wing." If the editor of "The Prose Writers" will produce an 
entire volume on some continuous subject, in the same style of 
fearless and acute discussion, and of graceful and elegant com- 
position, which is displayed in some of the paragraphs here — 
which we do not question his ability to do — we shall readily ad- 
mit his right to take a place among the foremost authors of the 
country. The present volume we have read with constant inte- 
rest and frequent admiration. We have derived more instruction 
from it than it would be becoming in a reviewer to admit. The 
reader is here brought for a time into society with the greatest 
and most accomplished of the minds of this country : 

" Et varias audit voces fruiturque deorum 
Colloquio." 

It is much to admit that we pass to the comments of the author 
without any very sensible diminution of interest or respect. 
The benefits to be expected from a compilation like this are 



iExAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 5 

several. In the first place, by exhibiting in concentrated bright- 
ness, " the ancestors' fair glory gone before," it will stimulate the 
youthful energy of the day to more earnest action in this great 
field of exertion and renown. In the next place, it \\dll tend to 
ascertain and illustrate, by a kind of induction, more reliable than 
any speculation or random experiment, the natural and proper 
tone and character of American literature. We wish, as perhaps 
all wish, and we believe, as certainly many do not believe, that 
there is, or is to be, a literature peculiarly and distinctively 
American. This country in its origin was little else than a con- 
course of individual persons, aggregated but not associated, and 
of companies clustered but not combined ; gradually this " dust 
and powder of individuality" has tended to an organization : a 
definite principle of social life has been evolved, or is evolving ; 
characteristics of a national existence have been perceived, and 
have deepened and multiplied as time has gone on. In every 
thing the dead-reckoning, which carried forward the old wisdom 
into the new region, has failed or begun to fail, and new observa- 
tions have required to be taken. A thousand tokens in every 
thing from which we can prognosticate, make it manifest that a 
spirit, indigenous and self-vital, inhabits our country ; a S4^)irit of 
power, ipsa suis pollens opibus. If all this be so, there is an 
end of the question about a national literature ; for this creative 
vigor, breathing and burning in the bosom of the nation, must 
find an issue in art as well as in action. The flower of literature 
will blow, and the fruit of science bloom, upon the tree of national 
life, as surely as the branches and leaves of business, politics or 
war expand and strengthen. It is then of the first consequence 
that every one interested in associating his name with his land's 
language, should apprehend correctly the tendencies of the literary 
spirit of the country, in order that he may divine the nature of 
that literature in its perfect development ;\ for it is only as his 
productions embody and represent that native spirit of art, that 
they will have a permanent life. He must look backward, and 
catch a prophecy of the future from the performances of the past. 
He must listen to the various notes that have been struck ; ob- 
serve which sound falsely, which have died away and become iu- 
1* 



6 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

audible, and which rise and flow and swell upon the ear, the true 
key-notes of the symphony. Of one thing, however, even a hasty 
glance gives us a gratifying assurance ; that of whatever nature 
or quality the new literature may be, it will bear no resemblance 
to the productions of " Young America ;" a fraternity young 
only in wisdom, and incapable of representing any thing of 
America but its vulgarity. Following the order of Mr. Gris- 
wold, we shall, in the discursive observations which we propose, 
attempt a hasty review of the several departments in which 
monuments of the mental vigor of America remain for the in- 
struction and delight of mankind : beginning with her statesmen 
and orators. 

The Congress which, having vindicated by arms those prin- 
ciples of liberty that are constitutional in Anglo-Saxon society, 
afterward assembled to define and institute them in abiding forms 
of legislation, brought together, to use the language in which 
Warburton spoke of the Long Parliament, " the greatest set of 
geniuses for government that ever embarked in a common cause." 
And to this day, that high lineage has never failed. Political 
and legal ability, in fact, seem to be an instinct of the American 
people ; and those faculties, implying an action, present, personal 
and persuasive, admit of scarcely any effective literary sortie but 
in oratory. Accordingly, tlie eloquence of the bar, the legisla- 
tive hall and the popular assembly constitutes the most charac- 
teristic display of American intelligence, and of itself sustains 
our pretension to take a rank among the great intellectual nations 
of the world. In the night of tyranny the eloquence of the coun- 
try first blazed up, like the lighted signal-fires of a distracted 
border, to startle and enlighten the community. Every where, 
as the news of this or that fresh invasion of liberty and right was 
passed on through the- land, men ran together and called upon 
some speaker to address them. It is a striking evidence of the 
dignity and elevation of this noble gift, that at seasons demand- 
ing deep ■ndsdom, and varied resources of suggestion and ex- 
perience, and consummate judgment, oratory was the most com- 
manding influence in the state, and that it was then more splendid, 
more finished, more truly classical, than it has been in any times 



^TAT. 30.J THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 7 

of less excited interest. Eloquence is the enthusiasm of reason, 
the passion of the mind ; it is judgment raised into transport, 
and breathing the irresistible ardors of sympathy. It contributed 
in a great degree to the adoption of the Federal constitution ; 
and never let it be forgotten, that when the same perverse and 
fatal spirit, against which the constitution in its infancy had pre- 
vailed, again appeared in the councils of the nation, inflamed by 
interest and ambition, and at once insidious and domineering, to 
betray the system which it could not overthrow, it was the same 
divine energy that, with the indignation of truth, the power of 
argument, and a torrent-rush of resistless feeling, swept forth to 
scatter and punish the foe. The eloquence of Hamilton, spoken 
and written, did much to establish our national system ; the 
eloquence of Webster did more to defend and save it. 

" Duo fulmina belli, 
Scipiadas, cladem Libyae !" 

Looking then at the monuments of American eloquence, even 
with the severe eye of scholars and critics, there is cause for 
satisfaction and a just pride. There is Henry, not fulminating 
from the clouds, like Demosthenes, to terrify men into sense and 
virtue ; not sending up a flash, like Cicero, to be a signal to dis- 
tant ages, rather than a fire of present energy ; but first drawing 
his hearers' sympathies to him by a delightful conciliation, and 
then charging them with the fervor of his own bosom ; familiar, 
simple and near, yet intense, vehement and thrilling ; converting 
his hearers first into friends, and then animating them into par- 
tisans, and finally hurrying all along with him in one united fel- 
lowship of feeling ; not surpassing in intellect, rarely analytical, 
never ascending to the illuminated heights of abstract wisdom ; 
but setting before his mind usually some one definite object, and 
piercing it through and through by the shaft of a sound under- 
standing, pointed by an hcmest purpose, and driven by all the 
force of devoted passion. There is Ames, whose speech was en- 
chantment, and his pen a subtler magic ; possessed by nature of 
" the delicacy which distinguishes in words the shades of senti- 
ment, the grace which brings them to the soul of the reader with 



g LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

the cliarm of novelty united to clearness ;" whose dignified and 
pure spirit, apprehending a corrupt triumph as the most fatal of 
failures, and unprincipled success as only a keener disgrace, 
desponded, not because it did not see justly and foresee clearly, 
but because its hopes had been so high and its feeling so refined ; 
as the common air would cloud and sully an atmosphere of more 
essential ether ; who, had he lived to see what we see, with his 
quick sensibilities of honor and his far-reflective sagacity, instead 
of recalling one of his gloomy anticipations, would perhaps have 
pointed to the most despairing omens of his eloquence, and have 
said in anguish : " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your 
ears 1" There is Otis the elder, impetuous, uncompromising, 
kindling ; Marshall, who could vindicate the power of reason in 
discussion as impressively as he could illustrate its dignity in 
judgment ; whose only surviving oration stands like the Cyclo- 
pean structure of a superior race ; Rutledge, Adams. Coming 
down to later times, Quincy, Stockton, Wirt, and afterward 
Clay, Calhoun, Everett, are truly orators of the early heroic age 
of our statesmen, the tfudsoi, of our history. Mr. Griswold has 
properly chosen Hamilton as the principal and representative. 
He closes an animated survey of his life with these discrimina- 
ting remarks : 

" In every page of the works of Hamilton we discover an original, vigorous 
and practical understanding, informed with various and profound knowledge. 
Uut few of his speeches were reported, and even these very imperfectly; but 
we have traditions of his eloquence, which represent it as wonderfully winning 
and persuasive. Indeed, it is evident from its known effects that he was a 
debater of the very first class. He thought clearly and rapidly, had a ready 
command of language, and addressed himself solely to the reason. He never 
lost his self-command, and never seemed impatient; but from the bravery of 
his nature, and his contempt of meanness and servility, he was perhaps some- 
times indiscreet. His works were written hastily, but we can discover in them 
no signs of immaturity or carelessness ; on the contrary, they are hardly ex- 
celled in compactness, clearness, elegance, and purity of language." 

Mr. Webster is properly selected as the representative of the 
best sense and highest wisdom and most consummate dignity of 
the politics and oratory of the present times. AVith elements of 
reason, definite, absolute and emphatic ; with principles settled, 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 9 

strenuous, deep and unchangeable as his being ; Webster's wisdom 
is yet exquisitely practical : with subtlest sagacity it apprehends 
every change in the circumstances in which it is to act, and can ac- 
commodate its action without loss of vigor, or alteration of its 
general purpose. Its theories always " lean and hearken" to the 
actual. By a sympathy of the mind, almost transcendental in its 
delicacy, its speculations are attracted into a parallelism with the 
logic of life and nature. In most men that intellectual suscepti- 
bility by which they are capable of being reacted upon by the 
outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, 
modified or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life ; 
from that time they remain fixed, rigid in their policy, temper, 
characteristics ; if a new phase of society is developed, it must 
find its exponent in other men. But in Webster this fresh sug- 
gestive sensibility of the judgment has been carried on into the 
matured and determined wisdom of manhood. His perceptions, 
feelings, reasonings, tone, are always up to the level of the hour, 
or in advance of it ; sometimes far, very far in advance, as in the 
views thrown out in his speech at Baltimore, on an international 
commercial system, in which he showed that he then foresaw both 
the fate of the tariff and the true nature of free-trade. No man 
has ever been able to say, or now can say, that he is before 
Webster. The youngest men in the nation look to him, not as 
representing the past, but as leading in the future. This practi- 
calness and readiness of adaptation are instinctive, not voluntary 
and designed. They are united with the most decided prefer- 
ence for certain opinions and the most earnest averseness to 
others. Nothing could be less like Talleyi-and's system of wait- 
ing for events. He has never, in view of a change which he saw 
to be inevitable, held himself in reserve and uncommitted. 

What Webster is at any time, that he is strenuously, entirely, 
openly. He has first opposed, with every energy of his mind 
and temper, that which, when it has actually come, he is ready 
to accept and make the best of. He never surrenders in advance 
a position which he knows will be carried ; he takes his place, 
and delivers battle ; he fights as one w^ho is fighting the last bat- 
tle of his country's hopes : he fires the last shot. When the 



10 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

smoke and tumult are cleared oif, where is AVebster ? Look 
around for the nearest rallying point which the view presents ; 
there he stands, with his hand upon his heart, in grim compo- 
sure ; calm, dignified, resolute ; neither disheartened nor sur- 
prised by defeat. " Leaving the things that are behind," is now 
the trumpet-sound by which he rallies his friends to a new con- 
fidence, a'ld stimulates them to fresh efforts. It is obvious that 
Webster, when contending with all his force for or against some 
particular measure, has not been contemplating the probability 
of being compelled to oppose or defend a different policy, and 
so choosing his words warily, in reference to future possibilities 
of a personal kind ; yet when the time has come that he has been 
obliged to fight with his fac» in another direction, it has always 
been found that no one principle had been asserted, no one senti- 
ment displayed, incompatible with his new position. This union 
of consistency with practicability has arisen naturally from the 
extent and comprehensiveness of his views, from the breadth and 
generality with which the analytical power of his understanding 
has always led him to state his principles and define his positions. 
From the particular scheme or special maxim which his party 
was insisting upon, his mind rose to a higher and more general 
formula of truth. 

Owing to the same superior penetration and reach of thought, 
the gloom of successive repulses has never been able to paralyze 
the power which it has saddened. The constitution has been so 
often invaded and trampled upon, that to a common eye it 
might well seem to have lost all the resentments of vitality. But 
Webster has distinguished between the constitution and its ad- 
ministration. He has seen that the constitution, though in bond- 
age, is not killed ; that the channels of its life-giving wisdom are 
stuffed up with rubbish, but not obliterated. He has been 
determined that if the rulers of the country will deny the truth, 
they shall not debauch it ; if they depart from the constitution, 
they shall not deprave it. He has been resolved, that when this 
tyranny of corruption shall be overpast, and the constitution 
draws again its own free breath of virtue, truth and Avisdom, it 



iETAT. 30,] THE PROSE WRITERS OP AMERICA. H 

■ shall be found perfect of limb and feature, prepared to rise like 
a giant refreshed by sleep. 

What task would seem more barren of present encouragement 
than that of confuting Mr. Polk's notion of the unconstitution- 
ality of " The Harbor and River Bill ?" But Mr. Webster, vividly 
alive to every wound or even sting against that sacred form in 
whose life lives all the promise of the future, takes the subject 
up with all the warmth of the dearest interest of his thoughts, and 
exhausts the power of his logic in enlightening the honest shop- 
keepers of Philadelphia on a subject which they probably cared 
for as little as they understood ; delivering with judicial empha- 
sis, on a subject of great importance, that which posterity will 
receive as an oracle of truth. What an impressive display of 
public duty is here given I what inherent dignity of nature is 
thus attested ! what a lesson to the younger men of the country 
to persist, and to "steer up -hill- ward," and never to compound ! 
But the capacity thus to be loyal to dethroned Truth ; to feel 
this enthusiasm of reverence for Right in captivity, belongs to 
those spirits only which nature has touched with her most en- 
nobling influences. The mental ability to be thus freshly and 
earnestly interested in each new scene of a most discouraging 
strife ; to rise from defeat with the flushed energy of triumph ; 
shows a large measure of the divine power of genius, and a spirit, 
the fountains of whose being are copiously refreshed from the 
eternal sources of strength and hope. 

Mr. Griswold, we suppose, is quite right in suggesting that 
the only name in modern times to which reference can with any 
fitness be made for purposes of analogy or comparison with 
Webster is that of Burke. In many respects there is a corres- 
pondence between their characters ; in some others they diS'er 
widely. As a prophet of the truth of political morals, as a re- 
vealer of those essential elements in the constitution of life upon 
which or of which society is coiistructed and government evolved, 
Burke had no peer. In that department he rises into the dis- 
tance and grandeur of inspiration ; nee mortale sonans. Nor 
do we doubt that the Providence of God had raised him up for 
purposes of public safety and guidance, any more than we doubt 



13 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

the mission of Jeremiah or Elisha, or any other of the school of 
the Lord's prophets. But leaving Burke unapproached in this 
region of the nature and philosophy of government, and looking 
at him, in his general career, as a man of intellect and action, we 
might indicate an analogy of this kind, that the character, tem- 
per and reason of Burke seem to be almost an image of the 
English constitution, and Webster's of the American. To get 
the key to Burke's somewhat irregular and startling career, it is 
necessary to study the idea of the old whig constitution of the 
English monarchy : viewing his course from that point of view, 
we comprehend his almost countenancing and encouraging re- 
bellion in the case of the American colonies ; his intense hostility 
to Warren Hastings' imperig,l system ; his unchastized earnest- 
ness in opposition to French maxims in the decline of his life. 
The constitution of the United States, that most wonderful of 
the structures of human wisdom, seems to be not only the home 
of Webster's affections and seat of his proudest hopes, but the 
very type of his understanding and fountain of his intellectual 
strength : 

" hie illius arma; 

Hie currus." 

The genius of Burke, like the one, was inexhaustible in re- 
sources, so composite and so averse from theory as to appear 
incongruous, but justified in the results ; not formal, not always 
entirely perspicuous. Webster's mind, like the other, is eminently 
logical, reduced into principles, orderly, distinct, re-connecting 
abstraction with convenience, various in manifestation, yet per- 
vaded by an unity of character. 

Mr. Webster has not merely illustrated a great range of men- 
tal powers and accomplisliments, but has filled, in the eye of the 
nation, on a great scale, and to the farthest reach of their ex- 
igency, a diversity of intellectual characters ; while the manner 
in which Burke's wisdom displayed itself was usually the same. 
We cannot suppose that Burke could have been a great lawyer. 
Webster possesses a consummate legal judgment and prodigious 
powers of legal logic, and is felt to be the highest authority on 
a great question of law in this country. The demonstrative 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OP AMERICA. 13 

faculty ; the capacity to analyze and open any proposition so as 
to identify its separate elements with the very consciousness of 
the reader's or hearer's mind ; this, which is the lawyer's peculiar 
power, had not been particularly developed in Burke, but exists 
in Webster in greater expansion and force than in any one since 
Doctor Johnson, who, it always appeared to us, had he been 
educated for the bar, would have made the greatest lawyer that 
ever led the decisions of Westminster Hall. We should hardly 
be justified in saying that Burke would have been a great First 
Lord of the Treasury. Mr. Webstei*, as Secretary of State, 
proved himself to be a practical statesman of the highest, finest, 
promptest sagacity and foresight that this or any nation ever 
witnessed. Who now doubts the surpassing wisdom, who now 
but reverences the exalted patriotism, of the advice and the ex- 
ample which he gave, but gave in vain, to the whig party at the 
beginning of Mr. Tyler's administration ? His oificial corres- 
pondence would be lowered by a comparison with any state 
papers since the secretaryship of John Marshall. Does the 
public generally know what has become of that portentous diffi- 
culty about the Bight of Search, upon which England and Ame- 
rica, five years ago, were on the point of being " lento collisa 
duello ?" Mr. Webster settled it by mere force of mind : he dissi- 
pated the question by seeing through it, and by compelling others 
to see a fallacy in its terms which before had imposed upon the un- 
derstandings of two nations. In the essential and universal philo- 
sophy of politics, Webster is second only to Burke. After Burke, 
there is no statesman whose wi'itings might be read with greater 
advantage by foreign nations, or would have been studied with 
so much respect by antiquity, as Webster's. 

In a merely literary point of view, this perhaps may be said 
of Ml'. Webster, that he is the only powerful and fervid orator, 
since the glorious days of Greece, whose style is so disciplined 
that any of his great public harangues might be used as models 
of composition. His language is beautifully pure, and his com- 
binations of it exhibit more knowledge of the genius, spirit, and 
classic vigor of the English tongue, than it has entered the mind 
of any professor of rhetoric to apprehend. As the most impetu- 
2 



14 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

ous sweeps of passion in him are pervaded and informed and 
guided by intellect, so the most earnest struggles of intellect 
seem to be calmed and made gentle in their vehemence, by a 
more essential rationality of taste. That imperious mind, which 
seems fit to defy the universe, is ever subordinate, by a kind of 
fascination, to the perfect law of grace. In the highest of his 
intellectual flights — and who can follow the winged rush of that 
eagle mind ? — in the widest of his mental ranges — and who shall 
measure their extent ? — he is ever moving with the severest tone 
of beauty. No one would think of saying that Mr Webster's 
speeches are thrown off with ease and cost him but little effort ; 
they are clearly the result of the intensest stress of mental energy ; 
yet the manner is never discomposed ; the decency and propriety 
of the display never interfered with ; he is always greater than 
his genius ; you see "the depth but not the tumult" of the mind. 
Whether, with extended arm, he strangles the "reluctantes dra- 
cones" of his adversary, or with every faculty called home, con- 
centrates the light and heat of his being in developing into prin- 
ciples those great sentiments and great instincts which are his 
inspiration ; in all, the orator stands forth with the majesty and 
chastened grace of Pericles himself. In the fiercest of encounters 
with the deadliest of foes, the mind which is enraged is never 
perturbed ; the style which leaps like the fire of heaven is never 
disordered. As in Guido's picture of St. Mchael piercing the 
dragon, while the gnarled muscles of the arms and hands attest 
the utmost strain of the strength, the countenance remains placid, 
serene, and undisturbed. In this great quality of mental dignity, 
Mr. Webster's speeches have become more and more eminent. 
The glow and lustre which set his earlier speeches a-blaze with 
splendor, is in his later discourses rarely set forth ; but they have 
gained more in the increase of dignity than they have parted 
with in the diminution of brilliancy. We regard his late speech 
before the shop-keepers, calling themselves merchants, of Phila- 
delphia, as one of the most weighty and admirable of the intel- 
lectual efforts of his life. The range of profound and piercing 
wisdom ; the exquisite and faultless taste ; but, above all, the 
august and indefectable dignity, that are illustrated from the 



^Etat. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 15 

beginning to the end of that great display of matured and finished 
strength, leave us in mingled wonder and reverence. There is 
one sentence there which seems to us almost to reach the intel- 
lectual sublime ; and while it stirs within us the depths of sym- 
pathy and admiration, we could heartily wish that the young 
men of America would inhale the almost supra-mortal spirit 
which it breathes : "I would not with any idolatrous admiration 
regard the Constitution of the United States, nor any other 
work of man ; but this side of idolatry, I hold it in profound 
respect. I believe that no human working on such a subject, no 
human ability exerted for such an end, has ever produced so much 
happiness, or holds out now to so many millions of people the 
prospect, through such a succession of ages and ages, of so much 
happiness, as the Constitution of the United States. We who 
are here for one generation, for a single life, and yet in our 
several stations and relations in society intrusted in some degree 
with its protection and support, what duty does it devolve, what 
duty does it not devolve, upon us !" In the name of distant 
ages, and a remote posterity, we hail the author of this and 
similar orations, as Webster the Olympian. 

But we leave a subject which we have incidentally touched, 
sincerely disclaiming any attempt to estimate the character or 
define the greatness of Webster. In reference to him we feel, as 
Cicero said to Caesar, "Nil vulgare te dignum videri possit.^^ 

First among the great theologians of the country must be 
ranked Jonathan Edwards, whose sincerity, courage and extra- 
ordinary skill in dialectics have commanded the admiration of all 
parties for nearly a century. Robert Hall, in one of his bursts 
of enthusiasm, declares him the "greatest of mankind;" and 
Mackintosh, the range and profoundness of whose studies quali- 
fied him to judge of his relation to the other masters of reason, 
does not scruple to say that " in power of subtle argument he 
was unsurpassed among men." Dugald Stewart, Hamilton, 
Chalmers, and indeed nearly all the leading ethical and theolo- 
gical writers of the old world, have endorsed these opinions. 
The " Treatise on the Will" is regarded as his greatest produc- 
tion, and its amazing power has contributed scarcely more than 



Ig LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

its perfect sincerity and conscientiousness to its celebrity. There 
is no trick of words, no subterfuge, no verbal sophism, no petu- 
lance or dogmatism, in his argument. He reasons of " fixed fate, 
free-will, foreknowledge absolute," not as one wishing to secure 
to himself a triumph, but as if anxious to remove all stumbling- 
blocks from the way of truth. His treatise on original sin was 
published ninety years ago, in reply to Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, 
the leader of the Arminiaus of that day, who had boasted that 
his own book on this subject was unanswerable, but was com- 
pelled to admit that no rejoinder could be made to the American 
Calvinist. " The grasp of his antagonist was death," literally ; 
for he died of mortification at his defeat. Mr. Griswold says of 
Edwards : 

"Born in a country which was still almost a wilderness ; educated in a col- 
''lege which had scarcely a local habitation ; settled, a large part of his life, 
over a church upon the confines of civilization, and the rest of it in the very 
midst of barbarism, in the humble but honorable occupation of a missionary, 
he owed nothing to adventitious circumstances. With a fragile body, a fine 
imagination, and a spirit the most gentle that ever thrilled in the presence of 
the beautiful, he seemed of all men the least fitted for the great conflict in 
which he engaged. But He who, giving to Milton the Dorian reed, sent out 
his seraphim to enrich him with utterance and knowledge, with fire from the 
same altar purified the lips of Edwards, to teach that 'true religion consists in 
holy affections,' the spring of all which is 'a love of divine things for their 
own heauti/ and sweetness.' " 

A history of theological opinions in America would have no 
completeness unless it included the names of the younger Edwards, 
Chauncey, Mayhew, Hopkins, Bellamy, Seabury, Dwight, and 
that independent and shrewd dogmatist, Emmons, " the last of 
the cocked hats," who died recently, after a conflict of nearly 
three-quarters of a century with all the forms of opposition to 
the most ultra doctrines of Geneva. These giants of the last age 
have been succeeded, in many places, by a race of preachers who 
present to us, under the name of sermons, discourses on moral 
subjects which have been handed down by Cicero, Seneca, and 
"The Spectator;" with "little more of the Gospel in them than 
is to be found in the heathen philosophers." Except Edwards, 
Dwight is the only New England divine of the Puritan stock to 



.?:tat. 30.] THE PROSE WRITER.S OP AMERICA. lY 

whom Mr. Griswold has devoted an essay. He came upon the 
stage while the smoke of the great battles of the last century- 
was clearing away ; and though a Calvinist, the " five points" 
of his doctrine were so rounded off that he suited perfectly his 
place and time. His writings have been extremely ])opular, and 
he was an orator of no mean reputation ; but his style neverthe- 
less was decidedly bad. He never learned the saying, " Apud 
oratorem vero nisialiquid efficitur, redundat ;'''' and his difTuse- 
ness and bad taste will prevent the continuance of his name in 
the select list in which it has been written. Yery different from 
the celebrated president of Yale was his contemporary Buck- 
minster, who, with fit opportunity and long life, would have carved 
his name in enduring letters upon his age. Of the character and 
eloquence of this youthful divine Mr. Griswold says : 

"With a face remarkable for its pure' intellectual expression, and a silvery 
voice, the tones of which won the devout attention and haunted the memories 
of all who listened, it is not surprising that in a community where mental 
power is so highly appreciated as in Boston, the weekly addresses of the 
youthful divine attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. His manner was 
artless and impressive, and there was something about the whole man that 
irresistibly fascinated the taste at the same time that it inspired respect and 
love. In social life he was remarkable for his urbane spirit, quick intelli- 
gence, and refined wit. He was the centre of a rare circle of the good and 
cultivated, and his death fell upon the hearts of his numerous friends with the 
solemn pathos of a deep calamity. To the readers of his discourses in whose 
minds they lack the charm of personal associations, there is perhaps a coldness 
in their very beauty. Yet few sermons equal them for a happy blending of 
good sense and graceful imagery. Truth is enforced with a simple earnestness, 
and pious thoughts are clothed in language strikingly correct and impressive. 
One of the most characteristic of these essays is the one on " The Advantages 
of Sickness." It was composed after a dangerous illness of several weeks. On 
the Sabbath morning when Buckminster was to reappear before the anxious 
congregation, at an early hour, before rising, he called for the necessary mate- 
rials, and wrote the entire sermon in bed, after having meditated the subject 
during the night. The bell had ceased tolling when his diminutive figure was 
seen gliding up the aisle of the church, thronged with expectant faces. He 
ascended the pulpit stairs with feeble steps, and went through the preparatory 
exercises in a suppressed voice. Still weak from long confinement, as he 
leaned upon the desk and gave out his theme, every ear hung upon the 
cherished accents. The effect of his address is said to have been afi'ecting in 
the highest degree. As it proceeded, he kindled into that calm and earnest 
ardor for which be was remarkable, and vindicated the benignity and the 
2* 



18 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

wisdom of the heavenly Father who had so recently afflicted him, in a strain 
so exalted and sincere that to this day all_who heard him dwell with en- 
thusiasm upon the scene." 

Of the living lights of Andover, New Haven, Hartford, and 
Cambridge ; of the learned and accurate Stuart ; of Bacon and 
Bushnell, with their light but shining armor, Jarvis with his vast 
erudition, and Norton, whose exact and comprehensive scholar- 
ship, clear, compact and beautiful style, and masterly discussions 
of the evidences and genius of Christianity are fitly applauded by 
Mr. Griswold, our limits forbid a particular characterization. 
Coming from New England into New York, we find in the last 
generation the wise and pious Hobart, and his Presbyterian con- 
temporary, Dr. Mason, who deserves to be classed among the 
most eloquent preachers since Bourdaloue and Massillon en- 
tranced the gay world of Paris, or Barrow and Taylor warmed 
and invigorated the colder hearts and minds of London. It is 
related that the celebrated Robert Hall, after listening to a ser- 
mon by Mason, while the American orator was in England, 
declared that his " occupation was gone;" he could never hope 
to approach so great a master ; and was so impressed by his 
superiority that he could not be prevailed upon for nearly two 
months to erenter a pulpit. Mason has left us no compositions 
to sustain his great reputation ; but we know that his mind was 
thoroughly furnished with the best learning ; that the fulness of 
his mind gave him his powerful and fit command of language ; 
justifying the words of Horace : 

" cui lecta potenter erit res, 

Nee facundia deseret hunc, nee lucidus ordo." 

Passing from the theologians, eminent as such, to those who 
have been more especially distinguished as religious moralists, 
we meet first the venerated name of Dr. Channing, whom we 
have always regarded as one of the most interesting and re- 
markable characters that this nation has produced. He was not 
distinguished for those qualities that usually confer celebrity in 
this country ; for his nature was in fact a complete antagonism 
to all the characteristics of our people and our day. In all 



^TAT.ySO.] THE PROlxE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 19 

wherein the ordinary great of these times are strongest, he was 
nothhig ; and that which constituted the mystery of liis undying 
influence, was what the popular mind was little able to analyze, 
however quick it might be to feel. He was not eminent for 
keenness of intellectual penetration, for closeness of logic, dex- 
terity of argument, or copious strength of passionate eloquence : 
the magic of his power consisted in the exquisite sensibility of 
his moral apprehension, in his subtlety of spiritual perception, in 
the fineness and freedom and fervor of his sympathies with nature 
and man and. truth. His greatness was in an unusual way. In 
meeting him in society, the first impression undoubtedly was dis- 
appointing. Certainly, he was not great after the same fashion 
that Webster is. Of the logical analysis, — the demonstrative 
power, — the piercing and all-pervasive ratiocination that, like the 
formulas of the higher mathematics, is at once comprehensive and 
exact, — which Webster has in such prodigious perfection, — Dr. 
Channing, as we have intimated, possessed little or nothing. When 
for the first time you "coped" him, to use the Duke's expression, — 
prepared, of course, more or less, for that re-active, wrestling vigor 
that you look for commonly, from a strong mind, there was ab- 
solutely no re-action at all ; and the sort of shock was felt, which 
one experiences when he has braced his muscles for a strenuous 
effort and finds that the object he opposes, offers no resistance 
whatever. You got a fall It was not, that the display of 
mental force was toned down by a peculiar delicacy of taste or 
an unwonted suavity of temper ; the mental force, nay, even the 
ability to understand and reply, seemed quite to be wanting. Of 
course, the visitor had no mind to appreciate what proceeded 
from one who appeared to have no sympathy with his percep- 
tions. If he were a quick and confident man, he went hastily 
away in contempt ; and remained, forever after, intolerant of the 
praises of so unimpressive a companion. But if he chanced to 
be of a more patient and inquiring temper, and remained to ob- 
serve and consider, his curiosity was soon engaged by something 
altogether unexpected ; and out of his first disappointment grew 
the capacity to comprehend those qualities which, when once 
comprehended, were sure to be admired. He made acquaintance 



20 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Rtat. 30. 

with a character wholly new and singular, in whose develop- 
ments he soon felt himself intimately interested ; a character 
which first puzzled, and then charmed. He beheld mental capa- 
cities, not so much rare in order, as novel in kind ; sentiment 
doing the work of understanding, and doing it with infallible 
accuracy ; feeling made rational, and reason warmed and animated 
by sensibility. It seemed as if, a Des Cartes in morals, Dr. 
Channing had by some fundamental conception, reconciled two 
faculties and two domains, before separated and antagonist, and 
had reduced affection and intellect to one ; originating, in effect, 
a new analysis. So simple, quiet, and even loose, did this new 
method seem, — so little of the old geometrical formality had it, 
that you might doubt its power and efficacy ; but when you saw 
it decomposing with ease the insoluble problems of philosophy, 
developing social theorems of immense application, and without 
any failing cases at all ; and, if not explicating all political diffi- 
culties, at least turning their flank and taking them in the rear, 
and thus provisionally determining them, — then your doubt 
turned into wonder, and your wonder grew to confidence and the 
enthusiasm of admiration. He formed, in truth, a new centre of 
opinion and action in this country ; he might almost be said to 
have introduced a new element into our civilization, and to fur- 
nish a new variety of character in our history. The effects of 
his career upon American society will never cease ; and whatever 
fresh commotions may disturb the waters of life among us, the 
gentle wave that emanated in expanding circles from the sphci'e of 
his operations will be reproduced in larger and broader sweeps 
throughout all times, and that agitation will be for the healing 
of the nations. 

In the same dignified company, a high place is justly given to 
Dr. Wayland, whose vigor and originality are appreciated. In 
regard to the literary characteristics of this distinguished writer, 
Mr. Griswold has been guilty of an infelicity, which he will 
probably correct in a new edition ; he has given a description 
that is applicable only to Dr. Wayland's later productions, and 
added specimens from his early works which are marked by 
qualities of a very different kind. 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 21 

Of American novelists, the earliest that attained general dis- 
tinction and enjoys a still-living reputation, was Charles Brock- 
den Brown. In some of his characteristics he resembled the 
school of Godwin ; in some qualities, he bore the stamp of 
decided originality and power. His nan-atives exhibit great in- 
genuity of mental contrivance ; his characters are analyzed with 
a morbid acuteness ; both are so vivid in their impression, and 
so connected in the sequence of the parts, that if the reader's in- 
terest is once engaged, it is held by a kind of fascination to the 
end. His writings, however, want relation to nature and ordinary 
life ; they lack the invigoration of human sympathy, and the 
grace of familiar and domestic sentiment. They look like won- 
derful pieces of mechanism ; they excite our respect and wonder, 
but do not attract affection. The decorations of his style re- 
semble cast-iron ornaments, more than the genuine flowers of 
imaginative feeling. 

But the writer who in this department has risen to the highest 
order of greatness, and in a style of narrative entirely his own 
exhibited the fullest luxuriance of creative vigor in art, is Mr. 
Cooper. With all that is impressive and splendid and peculiar 
in the condition and character of this continent ; with the prairie, 
the solemn forest, the lake, the wild and boundless ocean ; his 
genius is associated in enduring connection. The influences 
which in the silent mighty regions of the west act upon the 
character of man till they inspire it insensibly with a force and 
sublimity kindred to their own ; the enthusiasm that " thrills the 
wanderer of the trackless way" of waters ; are subjects of the 
first magnitude and difficulty in romance ; and the pen of Mr. 
Cooper has been equal to them. If you consider the variety of 
subjects over which his fancy has cast an illustrative ray, and the 
novelty of the effects which he has accomplished in fiction ; if you 
follow him through the long range of characters and scenes ; the 
Indian, the revolutionary soldier, the western adventurer, the 
sailor, the pirate, and many others ; in all of which he is superior, 
and in some of which he is supreme ; it will be acknowledged 
that he possesses a copiousness and energy of imagination which 
few in any day have exceeded. Few have been gifted with a 



22 LITERARY CRITICISMS, [JEtat. 30. 

larger share of the idealizing faculty, and none have exercised the 
faculty with more exquisite taste and judgment. The elevation and 
lustre of romance are given to every subject which his narrative 
takes up, yet the impression of reality is always preserved undimin- 
ished. The truth of the scene is always closely kept ; the character, 
effect and tone of nature are never sacrificed. He never indulges in 
false creations ; he never resorts to distortion from a want of strength 
to render the simple and genuine impressions. Persons and in- 
cidents and circumstances are described with minuteness enough 
to individualize and bring them vividly before us, but without 
that painful subtlety of characterization and description which 
forget that they are addressed, not to the intellect, but to the 
imagination and the taste. It must be remembered, too, in esti- 
mating the creative power of his genius, that in the cases in 
which his success has been most brilliant he was not dealing with 
scenes around which traditionary narrative had thrown a roman- 
tic charm, or incidents and characters that national feeling had 
invested with a sentiment which the novelist is called upon merely 
to render and not to impart ; that he was not occupied with the 
"old poetic mountain," which "inspiration breathes around," 
nor with the valley or the stream on which the shadows of the 
past linger and sport, but with regions bare of association ; with 
plains and hills and rivers not glittering in the ray of any noble 
recollection ; with characters known to us only in connection with 
vulgar or repulsive or disgusting accompaniments. He was 
called upon first to drive away the atmosphere of familiarity that 
surrounded and degraded the landscape, and then to breathe 
through all the region, from his own resources of fancy and feel- 
ing, the roseate air of romance. 

Next to Mr. Cooper, in the walks of fiction, and in the power 
to invest familiar narrative with ideal grace and sentiment, we 
are disposed to place the authoress of "Hope Leslie." There 
is a charm of imaginative purity and a beauty of refined thought- 
fulness in all her writings, which have caused us to read them 
again and again without diminution of interest or admiration. 
"When woman becomes an original and vigorous author, without 
ceasing to be a delicate and gentle woman, authorship is seen in 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 23 

its most delightful lineaments. We are glad to find Mr. Gris- 
wold thus appreciating the higher part of a character in which 
all is excellent and all is lovely : 

" Miss Sedgewick has marked individuality. She commands as much re- 
spect by her virtues as she does admiration by her talents. Indeed, the rare 
endowments of her mind depend in an unusual degree upon the moral qualities 
with which they are united for their value. She writes with a higher object 
than merely to amuse. Animated by a cheerful philosophy, and anxious to 
pour its sunshine into every place where there is lurking care or suffering, she 
selects for illustration the scenes of every-day experience, paints them with 
exact fidelity, and seeks to diffuse over the mind a delicious serenity, and in the 
heart kind feelings and sympathies, and wise ambition and steady hope. A 
truly American spirit pervades her works. She speaks of our country as one 
"where the government and institutions are based on the gospel principle of 
equal rights and equal privileges to all," and denies that honor and shame de- 
pend upon condition. She is the champion of the virtuous poor, and, selecting 
her heroes and heroines from humble life, does not deem it necessary that by 
tricks upon them in the cradle they have been only temporarily banished from 
a patrician caste and estate to which they were born. 

"Her style is colloquial, picturesque, and marked by a facile grace which is 
evidently a gift of nature. Her characters are nicely drawn and delicately 
contrasted. Her Deborah Lenox has remarkable merit as a ci'eation and as 
an impersonation, and it is perfectly indigenous. The same can be said of 
several others. Miss Sedgewick's delineations of New England manners are 
decidedly the best that have appeared, and show both a careful study and a 
just appreciation." 

We are happy also to agree with the present editor in our es- 
timate of the historical novels of Dr. Bird, especially the novel 
of " Calavar •," but Mr. Griswold has not observed his entire and 
hopeless inferiority in other classes of fiction, when he who was 
dignified, brilliant and classical, becomes commonplace, tedious 
and inelegant. The reason of the difference appears to be that 
the talent of the author lies not in the delineation of character, 
not in humor, nor in narrative, but in costume, picturesque im- 
pression and dramatic effect. " Calavar and The Infidel," 
says Mr. Griswold, in his introduction, " were the first novels of 
Dr. Bird, and there are few American readers who need to be 
informed of their character or desert ; though, as their accom- 
plished author has been so long in retirement, the inference is 
reasonable that their reception was equal neither to their merits 
nor his expectations. Dr. Bird has great dramatic power, and 



24 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

has shown in several instances considerable ability in the por- 
traiture of character. His historical romances are deserving of 
that title. His scenes and events from actual life are presented 
with graphic force and an unusual fidelity. He had the rare 
merit of understanding his subjects as perfectly as it was possible 
to do so by the most persevering and intelligent study of all 
accessible authorities ; and in the works I have mentioned has 
Avritten in an elevated and effective style." 

Of Mr. Kennedy, the author of " Horse-Shoe Robinson," etc., 
Mr. Griswold has spoken more highly, we think, than an un- 
biassed examination of his writings would justify. Of Mr. 
Paulding he says with considerable felicity : 

" Mr. Paulding's writings are distinguished for a decided nationality. He 
has had no respect for authority unsupported by reason, but on all subjects has 
thought and judged for himself. He has defended our government and insti- 
tutions, and has imbodied what is peculiar in our manners and opinions. There 
is hardly a character in his works who would not in any country be instantly 
recognized as an American. He is unequalled in a sort of quaint and whimsi- 
cal humor, but occasionally falls into the common error of thinking there is 
humor in epithets, and these are sometimes coarse or vulgar. Humor is a 
quality of feeling and action, and like any sentiment or habit, should be treated 
in a style which indicates a sympathy with it. He who pauses to invent its 
dress will usually find his invention exhausted before he attempts its body. He 
seems generally to have no regular schemes and premeditated catastrophies. 
He follows the lead of a free fancy, and writes down whatever comes into his 
mind. He creates his characters, and permits circumstances to guide their 
condu-ct. Perhaps the cEfeets of this random and discursive spirit are more 
natural than those of a strict regard to unities. It is a higher achievement to 
maintain an interest in a character than to fasten the attention to a plot." 

Mr. Dana may be considered as standing at the head of the 
literary men of New England ; and as being, past all question, 
one of the brightest, purest and highest intelligences that this 
land has yet produced. The delicacy of his mental perceptions, 
the strength of his reflective powers and the richness of his genius 
in composition, render him almost unrivalled in the high field of 
the philosophy of criticism, and in the department of art have 
made him especially able to trace with a learned eye, the law of 
that mysterious process by which, as in the case of Allston and 
of all who have reached the heights of genius, spiritual sensibility 
passed into an exalted aesthetic power under the animating 



iETAT. SO.] THE PllOSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 25 

guidance of thoughtful self-control. In regard to his mental 
characteristics, Mr. Dana may be called the American Coleridge. 
There ie the same union of the keenest intellectual subtlety — the 
most piercing philosophical analysis — with the wealth and glory 
of practical imagination. Looking at life and nature with the 
same blending of the moralist's with the artist's view, both of 
these remarkable men habitually regarded truth as the beauty of 
reason, and beauty as the truth of taste. As in the case of Cole- 
ridge, Mr. Dana's views and discoveries have been chiefly com- 
municated in conversation — by living action upon the under- 
standings of those who afterwards, in their most shining displays, 
have only reflected the rays of his intelligence. Hence his public 
reputation, great as it is and always was, has been of a reflec- 
tive and secondary sort ; that is to say, it rested not so much 
upon any actual impression which the public had received from 
Mr. Dana's productions, as upon the testimony of an intermedi- 
ate class of writers and students, who have appreciated his merit 
and propagated his fame. He has been more the author of 
authors, than the author of the public. The greatness of such 
men becomes known, as the ores of Mount Truolus were dis- 
covered, from the golden particles that were borne along with 
the current that passed by. 

In Mr. Griswold's estimate of the characteristics of the author 
of " The Idle Man," there is just perception and discrimination. 

" The strength of Mr. Dana lies very much in the union of sentiment witli 
imagination, or perhaps in an ascendency of sentiment over his other facul- 
ties. It is this which makes evei-y character of his so actual, as if he entered 
into each with his own conscience, and in himself suffered the victories over 
the will, and the remorse which follows them. There are beautiful touches of 
fancy in his tales; but, as in his poems, the fancy is inferior and subject to the 
imagination. He has a solemn sense of the grandeur and beauty of nature, 
and his descriptions, sometimes by a single sentence, have remarkable vivid- 
ness and truth. His observations on society are particular and profound, and 
he brings his characters before us with singular facility and distinctness, and 
invests them, to our view, with the dignity and destiny of immortal beings. 
His mind is earnest, serious and benevolent, delicately susceptible of impres- 
sions of beauty, and apt to dwell upon the ideal and spiritual. Its character- 
istics pervade his style, which is pure English, and has a certain antique 
energy about it, and an occasional simple but deep pathos, which is sure to 
awaken a kindred feeling in the mind of the reader." 

3 



26 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [.Etat. 30. 

Mr. Griswold has scarcely spoken with sufficient distinctness 
and emphasis of the extraordinary merit of AUston's "Monaldi," 
as a work of fiction. The wonderful mind which was' oftener 
and so perfectly exhibited by the peucil, was here revealed, not 
indeed upon a great scale, but with entireness of moral and in- 
tellectual effect. Indeed, we may say that it is as perfect a 
picture as Mr. Allston ever painted ; for the genius which it 
disi)lays, though employing "the instrument of words," is essen- 
tially pictorial in its character and impression. We may apply 
to it the criticism made in the work itself of a picture of the 
crucifixion by an old artist : " Though eccentric and somewhat 
capricious, it was yet full of powerful expression, and marked by 
a vigor of execution that made every thing around it look like 
washed drawings." The various persons of the tale are not re- 
vealed to us by an illumination seemingly proceeding from the 
author's mind, but flash their characteristics upon us with a 
vividness which almost renders us uncomfortable by its nearness 
and force. To display the operation of the passions with that 
intensity and clearness which his plan contemplated, it was 
necessary to represent the subjects of the narrative as endowed 
with sensibilities very greatly more susceptible and active than 
ordinary people ; yet with consummate skill these characters are 
held firmly to nature and probability. Nothing is morbid or 
overvsTOught ; but all healthful, genuine and actual. To exhibit 
a -series of telescopic views which, though greatly magnified, are 
never indistinct, and which first studied inseparate particularly, 
are afterward reduced to a common centre and point of view, is 
a surprising exhibition of genius and skill. Indeed, we venture 
to suggest, that scarcely any work in modern times, if properly 
ex,: mined, would exhibit the resources of literary art more won- 
derfully than the tale of "Monaldi." 

In speaking of Mr. AUston's moral nature, we ought not in 
fact to separate his literary productions from the revelations of 
his pencil. Mr. Griswold appears to be fully conscious of this. 
The opportunity which the period that has elapsed since AU- 
ston's death, has afforded of weighing, coolly and comparatively, 
the opinions formed of his abilities during his life, has confirmed 



iETAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 2t 

the inipressioii that his genius was superior, not only to all that 
has appeared in this country, but to anything that can be found 
in Europe, until you get back to the great immortal names of 
Italian glory, the heroes of art, the half-divine. No man ever 
had juster, deeper, clearer views of the character of art, and the 
splendor of his success as a painter, is principally due to the 
fidelity with which he worked out that conception, within himself 
and in his works. He understood the nature of art as it exists, 
distinguished from a transcription of the real, on the one hand, 
and from a metaphysical idea on the other. He had appre- 
hended, with a profound insight, the relation which a spirit and 
temper of art bear to moral virtue ; the fine, but vital links, by 
which it is allied to all that is good and all that is lovely in 
human sentiment and human conduct ; he felt the purity of its 
profession and the dignity of its practice. Mr. Griswold in- 
forms us that a memoir of the life of Allston is now in the course 
of preparation by his brother-in-law Mr. Dana. AVe hope that 
this statement is not mistaken nor premature. The dissemina- 
tion of views like Allston's upon art, under the living illustration 
of a career so beautifully true to that worship of excellence in 
art, to which early love had deepened, in the bosom of this eleva- 
ted man, would be of inappreciable value at this time in its in- 
fluence on literary and pictorial art in the United States, and 
upon the characters of those who profess it. It would raise and 
illumine their aspirations. It would teach them what to desire, 
and how to strive for it. There is abundance of intellectual 
action and of willing energy of mind in this country ; but it is 
essentially uninstructed as to the objects of its interest, and the 
nature of the service which it professes. It has not been told of 
the character of that Unknown God whom it ignorantly wor- 
ships. In Allston was seen the true artist ; one to whom the 
ineffable beauty had been revealed, and whose soul that sight had 
forever rapt and consecrated ; thenceforth his vowed and single 
purpose was to reproduce that celestial vision in forms of exist- 
ence, of thought, and of feeling — to develop the infinite from 
beneath the disguises of the actual, and shed around the things 
of time those rays which are a lustre of eternity. 



28 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

We have here alluded to the close connection between the 
forms of mental and moral power or grace, as exhibited by the 
great artist and the great writer. The subject is profoundly 
interesting. It has so presented itself to Mr. Griswold, who, 
in closing his preliminary view of The Intellectual Condi- 
tion of the Country, observes that the relation of the plastic 
arts to the higher forms of literature is so immediate that " the 
shortest survey of our intellectual history would be incomplete, 
without some reference to the noble works of our painters and 
sculptors." He accordingly touches in outline, though effective, 
strokes, the history of the higher forms of American Art, as 
shown in the productions of the pencil and chisel. The topic 
may be commended to his thoughts for future essay and 
enlargement in some independent form. It is one which would 
grow greatly under the consideration : and form a fine subject 
for a delicate and discriminating pen. It is a superficial 
opinion which represents art as subservient only to the delights 
of the senses, or the diversion and amusement of the vacant 
mind. Its truest ministration, as we have remarked in speaking 
of Mr. Allston, is essentially moral ; and "of the subtlest and 
most intimate operation. The highest forms of art, whether in 
music, painting, or architecture, touch sensibilities of our nature 
that are reached by no other mortal agency. They react on 
our inmost sympathies, in which they become melted in a trans- 
port of spiritual fruition. The benefits of such experiences, in 
developing and educating the nature, and bringing one part of 
our being acquainted with another, are highly to be valued. 
Tliere are those whose various mental qualities seem not to be in 
a state of communication, and in whom intellect, sentiment, con- 
science, passion, seem to dwell in unconnected chambers, and 
move in separate channels ! This is an imperfect state of life — 
an immature condition of existence. That emotion which pro- 
ceeds from an intense sympathetic enjoyment, is the natural 
provision for breaking down these detaching barriers, opening 
clear passages from one department of the soul to another, and 
mingling them all in the unity of a combined and entire 
character. The affections ordinarily are the appropriate solvent 



iETAT. 30.] THE PRO(^E AVRTTERS OF AMERICA. 29 

for the crude and isolated elements of the individual constitution. 
They liquefy the rude masses of consciousness, precipitating in 
dross the impure combinations, and causing the essential parts 
to flow forth together in one clear, blended stream of sensibility. 
But it is not every one who has the happiness to be subjected 
to the forges of affection ; and the range of its reactive energy 
is somewhat low and limited. Those more interior and abstract 
sympathies which fuse only at a very high point, yield to nothing 
perfectly but the appeals of that power which dwells in con- 
summate art. The appreciation and enjoyment of art is, in fact, 
but an action of affection in its finest and most transcendental 
phase ; and that action is vivid in proportion as it is exquisite. 
It flashes, like a harmless lightning, from point to point of our 
complex nature — illuminates depths of being that before were 
unknown to ourselves — traces with rapid certainty the tangled 
chain of mental correspondences — interprets between opposite 
and remote regions of our spirit in signals of light — and kindles 
in momentary splendor the visionary conflagration of inspired 
intelligence. 

Mr. Griswold does well, therefore, in speaking as he does 
of " Greenough, whose majestic Washington sits in repose 
before the capitol ;" and of "Powers, in whom Thorswalden saw 
the restorer of a glory to the marble it had scarcely known since 
the days of Praxiteles." Such men, he declares, "promise to 
make our country a resting-place for the eyes of future genera- 
tions as they travel backward toward Rome and Athens." 
The prospects of American Art in its ethnological characteristics 
deserve, as Mr. Griswold truly remarks, a large consideration 
in immediate connection with its letters. Let us, therefore, 
profiting by the hint thus given us, say a few words on this 
subject. 

A judicious critic, in distinguishing the characteristics of 
ancient and modern Art, has referred to Sculpture as the type 
of the former, and to Painting as a symbol of the latter. The 
illustration is, to some extent, well chosen. Classic art is, in 
its nature and impression, single, definite, substantial, satisfying 
the sense : Christian art is complex, vague, ideal, kindling the 
3* 



30 LITKHAHY ('KITICISMS!. [^vrAT. :^0. 

imagination. Form is the element of one ; effect is the object 
of the other. The older style indicates nothing beyond what it 
exhibits ; the latter school is essentially suggestive, and it con- 
ciliates the eye, only that it may command the mind. Natural 
emotion is therefore the region of the former. Moral conception 
is the peculiar province of the other. Modern art, throughout 
all its range, addresses the reflective powers ; it speaks to our 
spiritual being ; by an indirect, but sure appeal, it wakes to an 
intense sensibility, remote, undefined and slumbering sympathies. 
It might of course be looked for, that the ancients and the 
moderns should excel, severally, in that kind of prodnction 
which is referred to as the representative of their respective 
genius ; and so indeed we find it. The statuary of Greece 
stands as lonely, as lofty, as eternal in its perfection, as the stars 
of heaven : in literature, architecture and music, the emanations 
of modern intelligence have been recognized as genuine, dis- 
tinctive and admirable ; but in sculpture, Europe has never risen 
above a cold and stiff imitation of the antique. On the other 
hand, painting among the Athenians seems never to have gone 
beyond a vivid and illusory transcription of sensible objects, if 
we may credit the anecdote of the curtain and the fruit in the 
rivalry of Xeuxis and Parrhasius ; it probably made no approach 
whatever to the comprehensive, sublime, resistless creations of 
Angelo, Raphael and Guido. 

The question whether Art is likely ever to be enriched by a 
style of sculpture essentially modern, resolves itself, then, into 
an inquiry whether the marble is capable, in groups or in single 
figures, of developing an interest predominantly moral. In 
order that the pure influence of thought or feeling should be 
impressed upon the mind, through the medium of a work of art, 
it is necessary that the obtrusive definiteness of form should be 
kept back from view : the Italian painter and the Gothic archi- 
tect, accordingly, conceals, confuses, and shades away the shapes 
he is dealing with, until the realizing keenness of the senses is 
bewildered and fascinated, and the mental conception which lay 
insphered within the work is poured in upon the spirit in unop- 
posed intensity. The sculptor's difficulty is, that he has no 



iETAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS UF AMERICA. 31 

element to operate with but distinct and simple form ; and that 
form the human figure. The sense is therefore always addressed ; 
the idea of imitation is always present. If the mind wanders 
away for a moment in dreamy apprehension of the sentimeni 
which the stone appears to typify, material consciousness quickly 
calls it back to trace the natural beauties of the limbs, the face, 
the attitude. In order, also, that the scrutinizing taste of the 
eye may never be offended, these last must be perfect in their 
inherent and visible grace : to accomplish this, and at the same 
time to charge the figure with a glow of spiritual significance, 
which shall eclipse the brightness of physical perfection, is the 
profoundly delicate task which modern sculpture is called upon 
to execute. The Greek never attempted it : satisfied with the 
merely natural elegance of his Apollo and Yenus, he excluded 
from their faultlessness every conception not material and mortal. 
It appears to us that in recent times, this fine problem of crea- 
tive skill has found an abler solution, in the galleries of American 
genius, than in those of any country; and this chiefly in two 
works, which Mr. Griswold selects as representatives of the 
national power in this department — Powers' Greek Slave, and 
Greenough's Washington. Both are representations of real 
objects; yet in both, the paramount impression is ideal and 
moral. Both exhibit forms of surpassing merit — one, of com- 
manding grandeur^ — the other, of melting grace : but in both, 
all sense of physical proportions is merged and lost in mental 
sympathy with the thought that radiates from the image with a 
power to awe, to elevate and to refine the mind. Greenough's 
statue, of course, is not intended to be a portrait statue, as 
Houdon's is ; in which, so far as imitative art can aid the imagi- 
nation, we behold the Father of his Country "as he lived;" but 
is a representation of the historic idea of Washington, a personal 
type of the moral grandeur that is associated with that concep- 
tion. It is designed to embody in a form of appropriate majesty 
the impression due to his towering and awful superiority above 
ordinary men. Borrowing the antique conception of the divine, 
the figure is colossal; the attitude and expression those of a 
god. In its sublime entirety, it sets before the eye such an 



32 LITERARY CRTTICTSATS. [^t\t. 30.- 

image as posLerity will call up to its mind when it thinks of the 
mighty and unapproaclied career of Washington. In approach- 
ing the delicate creation of chaste imagination which Mr. Powers 
gives us in his Greek Slave, after the first shock of delight from 
the gentle rush of her beauty, wave-like, upon the spirit, is past, 
we are arrested and enchained by the profound and lofty interest 
of her countenance. The conception is as exalted, as the exe- 
cution of it is exquisite. It is an expression of offended dignity 
. — of expostulating rebuke. — of placid and pitying contempt. 
Confident in an unassailable moral safety — feeling that no 
material subjugation or injury can ever harm the soul — she 
stands in the pride of her unapproachable purity ; insulted, but 
not abased — outraged, but not degraded. There is no touch 
of shame in her features ; she feels that she is not responsible for 
the condition in which she is placed : an instinctive gesture of 
self-protection — an involuntary averting of the head from the 
spectacle of the wrong that is done her by such exposure — are 
tributes to the natural delicacy of her character. There is no 
shade of fear in her attitude ; her whole being, absorbed into 
intense consciousness of an impregnable spiritual existence, 
dwells in serene composure upon the calm heights of a more 
intimate and essential life. Never was the native majesty of the 
chaste, refined, and high-toned soul of a woman, embodied in 
nobler force and more enchanting grace. Never was it more 
admirably shown, with what energetic sincerity virtue can look 
down upon her oppi'essors, and chastise their unworthiness : never 
was the contrast between humiliating circumstances and a mental 
elevation more gloriously flashed forth. Over those who are 
disgracing themselves by this treatment of a woman, she seems 
to feel such infinite superiority, that reflection interposes to 
temper its excess by some infusion of compassion. Her look 
reproaches them for exhibiting conduct so ineffably dishonoring 
to them. She appears to blush for the degradation of her race, 
by the display of a behavior so discreditable to men. What, in 
a critical point of view, we chiefly admire, is the moderation 
which the sculptor has imposed upon himself in the material 
working out of this conception- — the exquisite temperance which 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 33 

he has observed in the degree in which a temporary feeling is 
allowed to prevail over the native and habitual repose of the 
features. Fixing the expression unmistakably upon the counte- 
nance, he has with consummate taste abstained from interrupting 
the serene beauty of loveliness and grace, further than to waken 
in the observer a train of emotion which no heart can fail to 
carry out to its full result. Such is the impression which 'this 
divine emanation of the artist's power gives to us. It is well 
called the Greek Slave, for it is the bondage of that ethereal 
essence whose incarnation is identified with Attica; it is an 
everlasting vindication of that supremacy of mind over condition 
which Greece first taught, and Grecian fame forever attests. 

But we return from this digression upon American Art, which 
the name of Allston — great both in letters and in Art — and the 
close connection pointed out by Mr Griswold, between letters 
and the expressions of high art, have naturally inspired. 

Of Hawthorne, an old and favorite correspondent of the 
Knickerbocker Magazine, appropriate specimens are given, and 
his manner is happily illustrated. 

Fay, Miss Leslie, Simms, Neal, Hall, and others, pass in re- 
view before the author, and receive each a measure of commen- 
dation. 

In passing from the writers of fiction to the historians and 
essayists, we are detained by the name of Mi'. Irving, which, 
shedding an equal lustre over all these departments, receives 
from all of them an equal reflection of honor ; " focus at once of 
all the rays of Fame." This eminent person ought ever to be 
followed by the respect and gratitude of his countrymen ; for 
he was the first who led American literature to the sympathies 
of the English people, and conciliated or commanded the defer- 
ence and applause of literary factions in that country, who, rivals 
in every thing, seemed especially to vie with each other in con- 
tempt for America. N'o man ever succeeded so perfectly in ren- 
dering literature delicious. Elevated, pure, of pervading refine- 
ment and chastity, his writings give us a pleasure which is almost 
sensuous, in its fulness and directness. Without apparent arts, 
without affectation or tricks, they fascinate, enchant, bewitch us. 



34 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

Subduiug our affections, and reigning over them with an abso- 
lute power, they always command the respect of our taste, and 
receive the approbation of our judgment. The charm is obviously 
not the result of an assumed manner, an acquired style, or a con- 
trived dress ; but springs from a source in nature, and emanates 
from instinctive and essential gracefulness of temper and spirit 
and feeling : 

" Ilium quiJquid agit quoquo vestigia movit, 
Componet furtim subsequiturque Decor." 

The richness and delicacy of his fancy, the ethereal flow of his 
humor, which like the dew of summer refreshes and brightens 
every flower and leaf and branch ; the constant and quiet good 
sense ; the playfulness of temper which never betrays from deco- 
rum, and never beguiles from seriousness of purpose ; the 
familiarity mingled with native reserve ; the inborn elegance of 
mind which renders gayety dignified, and gives attraction to 
grief and sadness, and throws an atmosphere of interest around 
occasions the most barren ; all these combine to form a talent 
for agreeable writing, which in extent and quality perhaps has 
never been exceeded. Through how wide a range, also, have 
these admirable resources of imagination and taste been exhibited 
in unfailing brilliance ! With surprising versatility of character, 
this exquisite genius first yields to the spirit of the subject or 
scene, and then glorifies it with the illumination of its own glow- 
ing life. It becomes grotesque, and revels quaintly amid the 
burgomasters of New Amsterdam ; in the scenes of Moresco 
chivalry, it assumes the forms and colors of imaginative passion : 
at once gorgeous and delicate, and so perfectly as to become 
almost the express image of Saracenic character and art ; in the 
lanes and parks of the merry England, it becomes simple, decent, 
homely ; in all its tone and temper and intelligence, more 
English than England itself; a Chaucer in prose ; in the daring, 
dashing life of the west, who throws himself into the abandon of 
adventure with more genial earnestness than the Tourist of the 
Prairies ? 

In another sphere, this frolic spirit can assume, with native 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 35 

majesty, the buskined tread of the historian. Not only can he 
do justice to every subject, however peculiar or difficult, which 
is given to hira, but he can write delightfully when he has no 
subject at all. " Astoria" has always seemed to us to be the 
triumph of his skill ; for the subject there, if not nothing, was 
certainly worse than nothing. For purposes of romantic art and 
elegant literature, what theme could be more jejune and imprac- 
ticable than the journal of a trading voyage to the Pacific, and 
a trading journey across the Rocky Mountains, by persons whose 
characters and objects and adventures had scarcely a ray of 
dignity or interest ? Yet, by mere power of style, and mere 
grace of manner and embellishment, he has made the narrative 
as delightful as a tale of genii, and transformed the desert into a 
garden of ftiiry loveliness. Mr. Irving in fact possesses that 
natural fertility of sentiment, that delicate observation and selec- 
tion, that truth of judgment and gentle animation, which supplied 
in Goldsmith the want of almost every qualification, and consti- 
tute a faculty of which it is correctly said that, " Nullum quod 
tetigit non ornavif." 

Among American historians, we are glad to find that Mr. 
Griswold appreciates the supremacy of Prescott : 

"Mr. Prescott is undoubtedly entitled to a prominent place in the first rank 
of historians. With extraordinary industry he explores every source of infor- 
mation relating to his subjects, and with sagacity as remarkable decides be- 
tween conflicting authorities and rejects improbable relations. His judgment 
of character is calm, comprehensive, and profoundly just. He enters into the 
midst of an age, and with all its influences about him, estimates its actors and 
its deeds. His arrangement of facts is always efi"ective, and his style flowing, 
familiar, singularly transparent, and marked throughout with the most felici- 
tous expressions. 

" Whatever may be the comparative merits of the two great histories he has 
ajready published, as intellectual eS"orts, there is little room to doubt that ' The 
Conciuest of Mexico' will continue to be the most popular. It is justly re- 
marked in the Edinburgh Review, that, considered merely as a work of amuse- 
ment, it will bear a favorable comparison with the best romances in the lan- 
guage. The careful, judicious, and comprehensive essay on the Aztec civili- 
zation, with which it opens, is not inferior in interest to the wonderful drama 
to which it is an epilogue. The scenery, which is sketched with remarkable 
vividness and accuracy, is wonderful, beautiful, and peculiar. The characters 
are various, strougljLinarked, and not more numerous than is necessary for the 



36 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JEtat. 30. 

purposes of art. Cortez himself is a knight errant, 'filled witb the spirit of 
romantic enterprise/ yet a skilful general, fruitful of resources, and of almost 
superhuman energies ; of extraordinary cunning, but without any rectitude of 
judgment ; a bigoted churchman, yet having no sympathy with virtue ; of 
kind manners, but remorseless in his cruelties. His associates, Valasquez, 
Ordaz, Sandoval, Alvarado, the priest Olmedo, the heroine Dona Marina, and 
others of whom we have glimpses more or less distinct, seem to have been 
formed as well to fill their places in the written history, as to act their parts in 
the crusade. And the philosophical king of Tezcuco, and Montezuma, whose 
character and misfortunes are reflected in his mild and melancholy face, and 
Guatemozin, the last of the emperors, and other Aztecs, in many of the higher 
qualities of civilization superior to their invaders, and inferior in scarcely any 
thing but a knowledge of the art of war, are grouped and contrasted most 
eflectively with such characters as are more familiar in the scenes of history. . . 
Mr. Prescott perhaps excels most in description and narration, but bis histories 
combine in a high degree almost every merit that can belong to such works. 
They are pervaded by a truly and profoundly philosophical spirit, the more 
deserving of recognition because it is natural and unobtrusive, and are dis- 
tinguished above all others for their uniform candor, a quality which might 
reasonably be demanded of an American writing of early European policy and 
adventure." 

We do not, however, agree with Mr. Griswold in considering 
Mr. Bancroft's history as "one of the great works of the age." 
Transcendentalism, so long as it keeps itself in the cloudy regions 
of metaphysics and moral sentiments, may escape confutation or 
exposure ; you cannot prove its worthlessness, because you can- 
not bring it to any absolute and settled test. But when it comes 
down into the terra firma of actual life and historical reality, 
and gives its views of national interests, and traces the connec- 
tions of human events, and enables us to see it against a back- 
ground of experience, we then discover the shadowy vanity of 
the imposture ; for these are matters with which sense and reason 
and logic, only can properly deal. " Qui Bavium non odit,'^ etc. ; 
he who can understand Mr. Emerson, may value Mr. Bancroft. 
But a man of merely common sense may read the three volumes 
of " The History of the United States," and he will find at the end 
of his lessons that he has not acquired one clear, definite notion ; 
one distinct apprehension of fact or thought. A series of dreamy 
forms has passed before his" mind; a procession of vaporous 
images has beguiled his attention ; but they came like shadows, 



iBTAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. gij 

and so they have departed ; leaving no impression, and no bene- 
fit behind them. The understanding of the reader is neither 
enriched, nor informed, nor quickened. 

In that class of essayists, and authors of fugitive pieces, who 
are conveniently designated as miscellaneous writers, Mr. Poe 
deserves a place. Narratives which rivet the interest, and sway 
the j!fe,ssions as powerfully as his do, indicate a vigor of imagi- 
nation that might send its productions forward far along the 
line of future life. Many of his tales, we have no doubt, will 
long survive, as among the ablest and most remarkable of 
American productions. In the perfect contrivance of the plans, 
which, though complex, are never embarrassing or perplexing, 
and in the orderly evolvement of all the incidents, they bear a 
resemblance to the dramatic plots of Ben Jonson, which, of 
themselves, without reference to the treasures which they wrap up 
in them, have been considered as giving him a very eminent 
rank. Of talents such as Mr. Poe is blessed with, the true 
employment is in original composition ; in a genial exercise of 
the creative faculties of imagination and feeling, in extending 
through a space which is else void and silent, the limits of the 
region of living and lovely forms, and augmenting the trophies 
of the genius of his nation and his race. To one who possesses 
the powers of close, logical reasoning, and of pointed and 
piercing sarcasm, the "torva voluptas^' of literary and social 
controversy is often a fatal fascination. But a man who is 
conscious within himself of faculties which indicate to him that 
he was born, not to wrangle with the men of his own times, but 
to speak truth and peace to distant ages and a remote pos- 
terity, ought to make a covenant with himself, that he will be 
drawn aside by no temptation, however vehement, from that 
calm dedication of his thoughts to literary art, which is the 
service he owes to that Spirit which has given him power to 
become one of its ministers. 

As an analytical critic, Mr. Poe possesses abilities quite 

unrivalled in this country, and perhaps on either side of the 

water. We have scarcely ever taken up one of his more careful 

critical papers, on some author or work worthy of his strength, 

4 



3g LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

without a sense of surprise at the novel and profound views from 
which his inquiries began, nor followed their development with- 
out the closest interest, nor laid the essay down without admira- 
tion and respect for the masculine and acute understanding with 
which we had coped during the perusal. But in the case of 
inventive genius so brilliant and vigorous as is shown in his 
poems, and in the papers to which we have alluded, and of which 
Mr. Griswold also speaks, we feel that even criticism of the 
highest kind is an employment below the true measure of its 
dignity, and, we may say, its duty ; for to be a tender of the 
light in another man's tomb, is no fit occupation for one who is 
able to kindle a lamp of his own, whose ray may abide against 
all the force of night, and storms, and time. The poet's is a 
consecrating gift. A man who can produce such a work as 
"The Raven," ought to feel that it was his office to afford sub- 
jects, and not models, to criticism. 

In the same class of writers, Willis has a prominent rank 
given to him by Mr. Griswold. To such he is fully entitled. 
The world has lately, with some diligence, been set wrong in his 
matter, but it is already, by a certain instinct, bringing itself 
right in the main.* Indeed it is a mistake to accuse the world 
of injustice or malignity. It is an honest world, at heart ; its 
faults proceed in reality from want of knowledge, or from defects 
in judgment. Like the rest of us, it is liable at times to bald 
misapprehension ; it is subject to the imposture of appearances ; 
it is prone to decide precipitately ; on many subjects, it is not 
well informed, and so is exposed to the arts of charlatanism and 
the arrogance of pretenders ; nay, what was hardly to be looked 
for in so old a subject, it suffers from an extreme of diffidence, 
and, from a want of confidence in its own clearest impressions, 
will believe one thing when it knows another, and will be dic- 
tated to by men who well might go to school to it. As respects 

* These remarks were written at a time when several of the English Reviews 
had conspired to make a virulent and unjust attack upon Mr. Willis's literary 
pretensions; the result, no doubt, in a large degree, of English insularity and 
national dislike. On this account especially, the author gives to Mr. Willis's 
merits, as identified with America, a special and elaborate consideration. — Ed. 



JEtat. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 39 

sagacity, it cannot be characterized as weak, but it is slow. A 
subject must be removed some distance into the past, before its 
myriad eyes can get the focus. When it does see, we must all 
give up to it. The rectification of popular opinions is, there- 
fore, a process of anticipation rather than of change ; and, in 
venturing upon the task of correction, we profess not to have 
thought better, but a little faster. 

With Mr. Willis we have never had the pleasure of any 
personal acquaintance or relations. But speaking of him as a 
literary man, by what, in common with the whole country, we 
have seen and known, we may affirm with certainty that no man 
is of a more open and prompt disposition in respect to the appre- 
ciation and encouragement of other literary men, who are always, 
of course, in some degree literary rivals. His hand is as ready 
to aid them when struggling toward distinction in letters, as his 
pen is to recognize them when they have emerged into it, to 
explain their merits and expand their reputation. Those who 
have needed him have seen his benevolence; those who have 
trusted him have found him faithful ; those who have favored 
him know that he is grateful. Conduct such as he has exhib- 
ited, and such a character as he enjoys among those who know 
him, a superficial or spurious virtue could neither inspire nor 
sustain. The world has a distrust of too much refinement — 
which it refers to a tainted heart or a feeble head — and the dis- 
trust is not unnatural ; but in the present case, if the testimony 
of friends is of any credibility — it is grafted on a wild stock of 
sense and feeling. Willis is a man who, if he possessed more 
cant, would be thought to have more virtue ; whose morality has 
not pretension enough to be popular, and who, if he had more 
hypocrisy of speech, would undoubtedly be credited for a better 
heart. 

The causes of the misapprehensions which have been prevalent 
on his subject might easily be discovered. One of them arose 
out of circumstances more honorable to his spirit and inde- 
pendence than altogether prudent. In the beginning of his 
career, he quarrelled with the reviewers; and it is generally 
agreed that a man had better have a bad epitaph after his death 



40 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [.Etat. 30. 

than their ill report while he lives. His taste, his good feeling, 
his disgust at imposition, and his hatred of oppression, drove 
him into that quarrel, and his ability and the justice of his cause 
carried him triumphantly through it. He spoke of Captain 
Marryat, in the high day of his popularity, as the whole world 
now acknowledges that Captain Marryat deserved to be spoken 
of; and he retorted with memorable vigor upon Mr. Lockhart, 
who, having violated the law of decorum himself with the 
shamelessness of a prostitute, now stickled for its strictness in 
others with the fastidiousness of a prude. 

Those who do not taste the peculiarities of Mr. Willis's merit, 
or are willing to be thought difficult, have imputed to his style 
the faults of affectation and conceit. Fineness of sense and 
feeling is undoubtedly the Delilah of his taste, under whose fas- 
cination he is sometimes shorn of his strength. Hence often he 
is not natural. He is too frequently "upon the rack of exer- 
tion." This must be conceded: and if the suggestions of an 
unknown counsellor are worthy of being followed, we would urge, 
above all things, upon this fine writer to achieve, as an all-es- 
sential element of true literary style, the merit of simplicity. 
But we shall not here enlarge upon what we may be per- 
mitted to regret. We can pardon something to the exuberance 
of youthful faculties, more to circumstances, and a great deal to 
the natural excesses of human temper, by which a man in pur- 
suit of refinement may verge upon effeminacy. Where there is 
uncommon merit, a liberal mind will overlook and forget defects 
and weaknesses in the glow of enjoyment and admiration. Has 
anybody yet found out how to defend Shakspeare's quibbles and 
clenches, or Dryden's freedoms, or Pope's unvarying monotony ? 
We believe not ; yet nobody is on that account less moved when 
Othello rages over the scene, or less open to the influence of 
brilliant sense and lively passion in the writings of the other 
two. We have not labored to acquire that waterish judgment 
which, under the name of critical, bears up and floats upon its 
surface all the light straws and empty rubbish with which 
valuable things are often surrounded, and lets every thing that 
is weighty sink out of sight. Mr. Willis's literary failings pro- 



JEtat. 30.] THE PROSE AVRITERS OF AMERICA. 41 

ceed out of a wortliv, or, at least, a pardonable cause : a hatred 
of parade, and a contempt for the arts of pedantry and profes- 
sional mystery. In truth, the old dignified and solemn style 
was so thoroughly done to death, that, for our own parts, we like 
even the extravagances of this natural and simple school. Let 
us, then, with a certain candor which becomes men who would 
judge, estimate the nature and extent of his capacities. 

No man has appeared in our literature, endowed with a 
greater variety of fine qualities. lie possesses an understand- 
ing, quick, acute, distinguishing even in excess; enriched by 
culture, and liberalized and illuminated by much observation. 
He commands all the resources of passion ; at the same time 
that he is master of the effects of manner. The suggestions 
of an animated sense are harmonized by feeling, and are adorned 
by a finished wit. His taste is nice, but it is not narrow or 
bigoted, and his sympathies vnth. his reader are intimate and 
true. His works exhibit a profusion of pointed and just com- 
ment on society and life; they sparkle with delicate and easy 
humor; they display a prodigality of fancy, and are fragrant 
with all the floral charm of sentiment. He possesses surprising 
saliency of mind, which in his hasty effusions often fatigues, but 
in his matured compositions is controlled to the just repose of 
art. But distinct from each of these, and sovereign over them 
all, is the vivifying and directing energy of a fine poetical talent ; 
that prophetic faculty in man whose effects are as vast as its 
processes are mysterious ; whose action is a moral enchantment 
that all feel, but none can fathom. This influence it is which, 
entering into and impregnating all his other faculties, gives force 
to some, elevation to others, and grace and interest to them all. 

A peculiarity of Mr. Willis consists in his having united in 
himself, and reconciled in art, two powers which are so distinct 
and even inconsistent that not only do they scarcely ever enter 
into the same genius, but rarely can be appreciated and enjoyed 
by the same taste. If the ideal faculty has, in any author, co- 
existed with the opposite talents of wit and observation, the 
two have yet been distinct, and have been exercised upon sepa- 
rate works ; but in Willis they seem to be identified to a great 
4* 



42 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [Mtat. 30. 

degree, and in his productions their influence is interfused and 
blended together. In his tales, for example, he leads us into a 
drawing-room ; the persons of the story are mere human gentle- 
men in coals and stocks, and ladies, not "in beauty dight" aZone, 
but appareled with the aid of strings and hooks and so forth. 
The beginning of the tale is simple, its progress easy, and its 
end satisfactory. Here the function of an ordinary story-teller- 
would cease ; but it is precisely here that Willis's art begins. 
What he has of remarkable lies beyond this ; it lies in the 
faculty which can add the loftier without taking away the less; 
which can create the wonderful without destroying the familiar; 
which can make the scheme ideal without its ceasing to be real ; 
can shed the rich lights of glowing fancy over the unaltered forms 
of common life ; can carry us through a romance without task- 
ing our inventidii, and delight us with all the interests of poetry 
without starting our most common sympathies. 

Mr. Willis's genius does not affront the sterner shapes of 
imagination that wait to be bodied by the poet : it woos the 
lighter and lovelier forms of fancy which are not less abiding 
in their beauty. The author seems to let his fancy wander at 
its own quaint will, and to contemplate no loftier end than his 
own amusement. But when we return to consider the impres- 
sion which has been produced and remains; when we observe 
the essential truth that is wrapped up in the careless comment, 
and what deep experience breathes in that which seemed but 
the wantonness of a capricious pen, then we recognize that this 
seeming negligence is real toil ; that there is an earnest purpose 
in this apparent trifling, and that much art has been concealed 
with more artifice. 

After all, the basis of the literary character of Mr. Willis, and 
the most valuable of all his qualities, is common sense; out of 
which we shall always believe, that the best literature must pro- 
ceed. He gets very thoroughly at the truth of life ; his percep- 
tions are not blinded by the pre-judgments of a visionary 
philosophy, and his conclusions are neither warped by his own 
passions nor racked to fit the prejudices of a faction. He is not 
forever dealing with sublimated theories, and bewildering reality 



JEtat. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 43 

with transcendental fallacies. His conceptions possess that spon- 
taneous force and interest, that native vigor and richness which 
recalls the strong days of England, when her literature spoke 
the language of nature, and not the cant of systems ; breathed 
the fresh air of life, and not the sickly atmosphere of schools. 

There is an intimate connection between genius and language, 
or, in more general terms, between the powers of conception and 
those of expression. Phrenology has recognized the latter as 
distinct, intellectual faculties ; and the law of the relation 
between the two and their mutual reaction is one of the contri- 
butions which knowledge expects from that science. As to no 
man are given the trembling sensibilities, the thrilling sentiments, 
the delicate apprehensions of the poet, but with them is given 
the power to impart every nicety of his impressions in the appro- 
priate dialect of his art, so upon none is bestowed this marvelous 
gift of tongues but those to whom is given a higher inspiration 
which it is their privilege to set forth. Indeed, it is only when 
the divinity of genius rides upon the language, that the vehicle 
thus becomes, like the car of Kehama, itself animated with life. 
What magic sits upon the syllables of Shakspeare ! how the 
phrases of Bacon glitter and ring, like the arrows of Apollo ! 
What rich and dazzling influence in the purple words of Thom- 
son, and the jeweled speech of Gray ! Expression, then, is one 
certain test of genius ; and Mr. Willis satisfies that test more 
entirely, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries. He is a 
master of the hidden sorceries of speech. He can unbind the 
rainbow hues that are wrapt up and hidden in the colorless light 
of our common language, and shed their lusti-e over thought and 
passion. Like the great authors of an earlier day, he aims to 
attain those fine and rich impressions which dwell only in lan- 
guage, and have no being but in words. An error is made by 
those who do not discriminate between science and art. In 
matters of reason, the thought is everything, the setting forth 
of it nothing. But with the fine arts, the expression is a great 
part of the creation. The fine arts exist at that point where 
mind and matter coalesce ; they are the issue of spirit embracing 
with sense ; hence their most genuine effects flash into existence 



44 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

only when the uiward thought passes forth into the outer medium, 
be it sound, color, form, or languag-e, and the two have become 
incorporate forever. 

Mr. Willis's early poems on Scripture subjects are marked by 
an exquisiteness of moral perception — a delicacy of penciling, 
like the touches of the morning light along the heavens, and a 
noble sympathy with truth and virtue. The snowy gleams of 
morning hope are joined to a glow of passion as golden as sun- 
set ; and the mingled ray flushes everything into beauty. To 
equal the best that America has yet done, Willis needs only that 
profound study of poetry as a great art, and that patient and 
energetic development of his faculties, without which the old 
sublimities of verse were never reached. 

For ourselves, bred in a school of letters too severe, perhaps, 
in the extent and nicety of its exactions, we are not apt to throw 
our admiration about promiscuously. To that which is modern 
and popular, we yield it not unreluctantly. At the same time we 
ask, who is the writer now in England that combines upon his 
pages so many of the qualities that contribute to form that 
copious, rich and mellow composition which characterizes the old 
models of strength and beauty ? The literature of England has, 
in modern times, degenerated : it has become factitious, feeble, 
and false ; technical, narrow, and dogmatic. The strong, bold 
music which once rose from it, and shook the heavens with its 
kingly tones, is changed to a lean and scrannel pipe, whose thin 
sounds tinkle in the chambers of the ear, but neither reach the 
understanding nor rouse the heart. Mr. Willis very wisely 
turned away from the irretrievable barrenness of this meta- 
physical school, to refresh his faculties at the fountains of a more 
genuine inspiration. The type of his manner might be found 
in the writings of the best class of those choice spirits who 
flowered into literature a little before and after the period of the 
Restoration ; men of thought and of action ; at once geniuses, 
scholars and courtiers. He possesses that delicate propriety of 
sentiment, instinctive grace, and truth combined with refinement 
of perception, together with a rare felicity of words, which drew 
down on Waller the weighty praise of Dryden, who often called 



iETAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 45 

him the father of our English elegance, and taught Pope, in the 
next age, to appreciate and enlarge his merit. There is the same 
usage of actual life in its best phases ; the same knowledge of 
the heart, if not in its deeper aud darker workings, yet in all the 
wide range of healthful, fine and pleasurable emotion ; the same 
spontaneous good sense, suavity of manner, and perpetual soft 
play of wit. We must confess that this school of letters has in 
it something very charming : it addresses our sympathies, if not 
with the force of some which went before it, yet with an intelli- 
gence, breadth, and distinctness which none that have succeeded 
it have reached. It is the literature of gentlemen. Those who are 
familiar only with the violent tribunitian style of this time will 
not at once recognize its strength ; and those who have had 
their virtue stretched upon the theological racks of the age, will 
hardly give it credit for the solid and genuine integrity which it 
conceals under an entire simplicity of manner. 

Though never disposed to dogmatize where it is at all reasona- 
ble to doubt, we have no idea of suffering any of the modern 
school of England to dictate judgments to us upon literary sub- 
jects. We see nothing in their performances which should make 
us afraid of their opinions. This is a world in which nations, 
like individuals, must take care of themselves. Whenever 
America chooses to claim her own, she may hold forth the name 
of this gifted person, as that of a writer, who has felt and been 
faithful to the great mission of art ; which is, not to lend itself 
to the perversions of schemes and theories, but to develop, to 
animate, and to beautify the native, spontaneous, deathless 
sympathies and aspirations of humanity. Above all, this is his 
peculiar characteristic as an author, that, while others touch but 
one string, or entertain us with the echoes of a single note, there 
proceeds from his productions a rich and varied chime of reason, 
passion, sentiment, and fancy, whose tones enrich the air with 
charming melody, and long will float upon the breezes of the 
future. 

In a special department of this same class of miscellaneous 
writers, in which Mr. Willis is presented, the editor of " The 
Prose Writers" includes Mrs. Kirkland, the well-known authoress 



46 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 30. 

of "Western Clearings," "A New Home," "Forest Life," 
and other tales descriptive of American frontier character and 
homes. This particular department of writers is likely to receive 
new honor, we are told, in a production called "Leavenworth," 
a story of the Mississippi and the Prairies, by Mr. J. D. Nourse, 
of Kentucky. 

This is a field of literature all our own, and which we specially 
note, because we desire to see it specially cultivated. As we 
have stated in the opening and in other parts of this paper, we 
entertain a confident opinion that the progress of life and action 
in our country will develop, in every department of taste, 
a style essentially native and original. We constantly have 
prophesied of a national literature that should be equally genuine, 
in its relations to truth and beauty, with those elder schools 
which criticism has sealed with its approbation, and yet be 
stamped with the marks of a new and individual creation ; a 
style of composition that should symbolize, in the richness of its 
resources, the variety of its effects, and the energy of its tone, 
those characteristics of force and freedom and expansion that 
mark the physical scenes amid which we are placed, and the 
spirits and minds of the men who inhabit them. To be Ameri- 
can without falling into Americanisms — to catch that which is 
peculiar among us through exuberance of youthful power and 
not through distortion of ancient forms — to derive from the 
promises of the Future an ideality more trancing than the 
memories of the Past, and to find in Hope an inspiration more 
kindling than was ever drawn from Fancy — is the noble task 
that is set before him that would be in letters the type and idol 
of a nation which is just rustling its wings in preparation for the 
limitless flight that awaits its energies. Some of our ablest 
authors, fascinated, very excusably, with the faultless models of 
another time, have declined these new conditions of distinction 
entirely; they have given us merely Spectators and Tattlers 
with false dates, and developed a style of composition whose 
very merits imply an anachronism, even in the proportion of 
excellence. Others have understood the result to be attained 
better than the means of arriving at it. They have failed to 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 47 

take the difference between those peculiarities in our society, 
manners, tempers and tastes, which are genuine and characteristic, 
and those which are merely defects and errors upon the English 
system ; they have acquired the force and gayety of liberty, but 
not the dignity of independence, and are only provincial when 
they hoped to be national. Mr. Cooper, hitherto, appears to us 
to have been more happy than any other writer in reconciling 
those repugnant qualities which are indicated in our opening 
remark; and displaying the features, character and tone of a 
new and great national style in letters, which, original and unimi- 
tative, is yet in harmony with the truth of nature and ancient 
models. And it is on that account that we have always con- 
sidered Mr. Cooper's greatness as resting on quite another plat- 
form from that of several of our eminent men of letters. "There 
is but one way," says Mr. Griswold, "in which we can be rightly 
and advantageously free from the tyranny of British examples. 
Truth of understanding and truth of feeling must be the only 
directors to real excellence in untried courses. In literary art, 
as in the higher one of virtue, it is only when ' the truth shall 
make us free,' that we can become 'free indeed.'" 

The past of America — both that which brings us in contact 
with the early Indian races, and that which is illustrated by the 
heroism of our revolutionary struggle — has already yielded a 
copious harvest to the sickle of the Romancer. But the America 
of the present hour — the America whose history is to be found 
only in the columns of the morning newspaper, or in the Extra 
which brings our annals up to the present moment, is abounding 
in occurrences of startling and profound interest, and in charac- 
ters full of the power and passions that tell with enduring effect 
upon the condition of the world. The tree of our national life, 
however dry and wooden it may seem in the liortus siccus of the 
north and east, shoots out in the opposite directions into a wild 
luxuriance, characteristic of a climate whose forest growths are 
brightened with tints with which nothing among us but the 
splendors of the heavens can compete. That Gothic fervor of 
invasion which had so long been abeyant in the civilization of 
England, there swells once more within our blood : as in the 



48 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

days of Alaric, the stream of an irrepressible population sweeps 
down in tumultuous current upon the plains of the south, and 
encountering the adverse current of another rac&, the shock 
sends the waters of strife foaming into forms that glitter with 
the dazzle of romance and wonder. 

The difficulty in dealing with the incidents of our western 
progress in recent times, is that their inherent and substantial 
interest is so powerful, that the task of idealizing them becomes 
almost impracticable. Herein consist the merits of both the 
authors we have named in this particular connection. Of Mrs. 
Kirkland's Western Clearings, Mr. Griswold thus speaks : 

"It has the strength, freshness, effect and brilliancy, which we associate 
with the best conception of our native character, and is uniformly saved from 
those kindred faults which lie so fatally near to this bold class of virtues, by 
the inborn refinement, practised taste, ready tact, and varied resources which 
are the special and rare accomplishment of this delightful writer. In the 
roughest scenes, she is never coarse; amidst the least cultivated society, she 
never is vulgar. She interests us in the wild men and in the wild occurrences 
of border life, by identifying them with the fortunes and feelings of that 
humanity of which we are a part. Her sympathies are sensitive, and various 
in their range, but always sound and healthful, and neither extravagant in their 
objects, nor excessive in their degree. The constant presence of strong, active 
sense, on the part of the author, carries us through the monotonous incidents 
of western settlement with animation, amusement, and instruction. These 
narratives have, throughout, that simplicity, vigor, and inherent beauty, which 
a superior mind, if it be faithful to the great law of genuineness and honesty, 
never fails of attaining in its representations of the actual." 

Mr. Nourse, instead of gazing at the views before him through 
the medium of a dreamy sentiment merely, has looked upon them 
through the atmosphere of those mighty feelings and kindling 
thoughts and fervid expectations which, to the appreciant eye, 
hang ever around them — the only medium capable of refracting 
such stern realities into a picturesque harmony. The visionary 
faculty of anticipation and reflection has been the influence by 
vi^hich he has transmuted the actual into the poetic. A conspiracy 
of land speculators, viewed as the origin of a nation, acquires 
grandeur under the pen of the philosophic narrator : the charac- 
ter of the huntsman of the backwoods looms up into something 



JStat. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 49 

of classic majesty, when we consider that the rovings of his 
impatient steps are the march of an empire : the rough expe- 
riences of this border life are clothed with elevation and refine- 
ment by a conception of the immense social results that are 
mingled with the fortunes of these daring wanderers. The 
coarseness of the materials wi'ought with, is rescued from offen- 
siveness, sometimes by a gleam of profound thought, sometimes 
by an exhibition of exquisite feeling, and, occasionally, by a 
highly-wrought description of scenery. The singular contrasts 
produced by the rapid cross-motions of the elements of life upon 
a scene where, so far as the structure of society is concerned, 
the work of creation may be said to be yet going on; the 
strange lustre which a mature political system assumes, when 
seen in relief against a state of savage turbulence, which it is 
extending over and redeeming; the thrilling spectacle of the 
magnificence of the phenomena of nature, in that vast region, 
being overborne, and even dwarfed, by the greater sublimity of 
human audacity and achievement : all these are characteristic 
circumstances of a society which belongs to no country but our 
own ; — a society at ^once American and the most wonderful now 
existing upon earth. 

Mr. Griswold's characterization of Chief Justice Marshall is 
one of the most extensive in the book. We copy it entire : 

" Mr. Marshall's career as Chief Justice extended through a period of more 
than thirty-four years, which is the longest judicial tenure recorded in history. 
To one who cannot follow his great judgments, in which, at the same time, the 
depths of legal wisdom are disclosed and the limits of human reason measured, 
the language of just eulogy must wear an appearance of extravagance. In 
his own profession he stands for the reverence of the wise rather than for the 
enthusiasm of the many. The proportion of the figure was so perfect, that 
the sense of its vastness was lost. Above the difiiculties of common minds, he 
was in some degree above their sympathy. Saved from popularity by the 
very rarity of his qualities, he astonished the most where he was best under- 
stood. The questions upon which his judgment was detained, and the con- 
siderations by which his decision was at last determined, wore such aa 
ordinary understandings, not merely could not resolve, but were often inade- 
quate even to appreciate or apprehend. It was his manner to deal directly 
with the results of thought and learning, and the length and labor of the 
processes by which these results were suggested and verified might elude the 

5 



50 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

consciousness of those wlio liad not themselves attempted to perform them. 
From the position in which he stood of evident superiority to his suhjecl, it 
was obviously so easy for him to describe its character and define its relations, 
that wo sometimes forgot to wonder by what faculties or what efforts he had 
attained to that eminence. We were so much accustomed to see his mind 
move only in the light, that there was a danger of our not observing that the 
illumination by which it was surrounded was the beam of its own presence, 
and not the natural atmosphere of the scene. 

"The true character and measure of Marshall's greatness are missed by 
those who conceive of him as limited within the sphere of the justices of Eng- 
land, and who describe him merely as the first of lawyers. To have been 
'the most consummate judge that ever sat in judgment/ was the highest 
possibility of Eldon's merit, but was only a segment of Marshall's fame. It 
was in a distinct department, of more dignified functions, almost of an 
opposite kind, that he displayed those abilities that advance his name to the 
highest renown, and shed around it the glories of a statesman and legislator. 
The powers of the Supreme Court of the United States are such as were never 
before confided to a judicial tribunal by any people. As determining, without 
appeal, its own jurisdiction, and that of the legislature and executive, that 
court is not merely the highest estate in the country, but it settles and con- 
tinually moulds the constitution of the government. Of the great work of 
constructing a nation, but a small part, practically, had been performed when 
the written document had been signed by the convention : a vicious theory of 
interpretation might defeat the grandeur and unity of the organization, and a 
want of comprehension and foresight might fatally perplex the harmony of 
the combination. The administration of a system of polity is the larger part 
of its establishment. What the constitution was to be, depended on the 
principles on which the federal instrument was to be construed, and they were 
not to be found in tho maxims and modes of reasoning by which the law 
determines upon social contrasts between man and man, but were to be sought 
anew in the elements of political philosophy and the general suggestions of 
legislative wisdom. To these august duties Judge Marshall brought a great- 
ness of conception that was commensurate with their difficulty; he came to 
them in the spirit and with the strength- of one who would minister to the 
development of a nation; and it was the essential sagacity of his guiding 
mind that saved us from illustrating the sarcasms of Mr. Burke about paper 
constitutions. He saw the futility of attempting to control society by a meta- 
physical theory; he apprehended the just relation between opinion and life, 
between the forms of speculation and the force of things. Knowing that we 
are wise in respect to nature, only as we give back to it faithfully what we 
h.ave learned from it obediently, he sought to fix the wisdom of the real and 
to resolve it into principles. He made the nation explain its constitution, and 
compelled the actual to define the possible. Experience was the dialectic by 
which he deduced from substantial premises a practical conclusion. The might 
of reason by which convenience and right were thus moulded into union, was 
amazing. But while he knew the folly of endeavoring to be wiser than time. 



^TAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITEKS OF AMERICA. 5I 

his matehless resources of good sense contributed to the orderly development 
ef the inherent elements of the constitution, by a vigor and dexterity as 
eminent in their kind as they were rare in their combination. The vessel of 
state was launched by the patriotism of many : the chart of her course was 
designed chiefly by Hamilton : but when the voyage was begun, the eye that 
observed, and the head that reckoned, and the hand that compelled the ship 
to keep her course amid tempests without and threats of mutiny within, 
were those of the chief justice. Posterity will give him reverence as one of 
the founders of the nation ; and of that group of statesmen who may one day, 
perhaps, be regarded as above the nature, as they certainly were beyond the 
dimensions of men, no figure, save one alone, will rise upon the eye in gran- 
deur more towering than that of John Marshall. 

" The authority of the Supreme Court, however, is not confined to cases of 
constitutional law : it embraces the whole range of judicial action, as it is dis- 
tributed in England into legal, equitable, ecclesiastical and maritime jurisdic- 
tions. The equity system of this court was too little developed to enable us to 
say what Marshall would have been as a chancellor. It is diflBcult to admit 
that he would have been inferior to Lord Eldon : it is impossible to conceive 
that he could at all have resembled Lord Eldon. But undoubtedly the native 
region and proper interest of a mind so analytical and so sound, so piercing 
and so practical, was the Common Law, that vigorous system of manly reason 
and essential right, that splendid scheme of morality expanded by logic and 
informed by prudence. Perhaps the highest range of English intelligence is 
illustrated in the law : yet where in the whole line of that august succession 
will be found a character which fills the measure of judicial greatness so com- 
pletely as Chief Justice Marshall ? AVhere in English history is the judge, 
whose mind was at once so enlarged and so systematic, who so thoroughly had 
reduced professional science to general reason, in whose disciplined intellect 
technical learning had so completely passed into native sense ? Vast as the 
reach of the law is, it is not an exaggeration to say that Marshall's under- 
standing was greater, and embraced the forms of legal sagacity within it, as a 
part of its own spontaneous wisdom. He discriminated with instinctive 
accuracy between those technicalities which have sprung from the narrowness 
of inferior minds, and those which are set by the law for the defence of some 
vital element of justice or reason. The former he brushed away like cobwebs, 
while he yielded to the latter with a respect which sometimes seemed to those 
'whose eyes were' not 'opened' a species of superstition. In his judicial 
oifice the method of Marshall appeared to be, first to bow his understanding 
reverently to the law, and calmly and patiently to receive its instructions as 
those of an oracle of which he was the minister; then, to prove these dictates 
by the most searching processes of reason, and to deliver them to others, not 
as decrees to be obeyed, but as logical manifestations of moral truth. Un- 
doubtedly he made much use of adjudged cases ; but he used them to give 
light and certainty to his own judgment, and not for the vindication or support 
of the law. He would have deemed it a reproach alike to his abilities and his 
station, if he should have determined upon precedent what could have been 



52 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

demonstrated by reason, or had referred to authority what belonged to princi- 
ple. With singular capacity, he united systematic reason with a perception 
of particular equity : too scrupulous a regard for the latter led Lord Eldon in 
most instances to adjudicate nothing but the case before him; but Marshall 
remembered that while he owed to the suitor the decision of the case, he owed 
to society the establishment of the principle. His mind naturally tended, not 
to suggestion and speculation, but to the determination of opinion and the 
closing of doubts. On the bench he always recollected that ho was not merely 
a lawyer, and much less a legal essayist; he was conscious of an official duty 
and an official authority; and considered that questions might be discussed 
elsewhere, but came to be settled by him. The dignity with which these 
duties were discharged was not the least admirable part of the display. It 
was Wisdom on the seat of Power, pronouncing the decrees of Justice. 

"Political and legal sense are so distinct from one another as almost to be 
irreconcilable in the same mind. The latter is a mere course of deduction 
from premises ; the other calls into exercise the highest order of perceptive 
faculties, and that quick felicity of intuition which flashes to its conclusions by 
a species of mental sympathy rather than by any conscious process of argu- 
mentation. The one requires that the susceptibility of the judgment should 
bo kept exquisitely alive to every suggestion of the practical, so as to catch 
and follow the insensible reasonings of life, rather than to reason itself: the 
other demands the exclusion of every thing not rigorously exact, and the con- 
centration of the whole consciousness of the mind in kindling implicit truth 
into formal principles. The wonder, in Judge Marshall's case, was to see 
these two almost inconsistent faculties, in quality so matchless and in develop- 
ment so magnificent, harmonized and united in his marvellous intelligence. 
We beheld him pass from one to the other department without confusing 
their nature, and without perplexing his own understanding. When he 
approached a question of constitutional jurisprudence, we saw the lawyer 
expand into the legislator; and in returning to a narrower sphere, pause from 
the creative glow of statesmanship, and descend from intercourse with the 
great conceptions and great feelings by which nations are guided and society 
is advanced, to submit his faculties with docility to the yoke of legal forms, 
and with impassible calmness to thread the tangled intricacies of forensic 
technicalities. 

"There was in this extraordinary man an unusual combination of the 
capacity of apprehending truth, with the ability to demonstrate and make it 
palpable to others. They often exist together in unequal degrees. Lord 
Mansfield's power of luminous explication was so surpassing that one might 
always say that ho made others perceive what he did not understand himself; 
but the numerous instances in which his decisions have been directly over- 
thrown by his successors, and the still greater number of cases in which his 
opinions have been silently departed from, compel a belief that his judgment was 
not of the truest kind. Lord Eldon's judicial sagacity was a species of inspi- 
ration; but ho seemed to be unable not only to convince others, but oven to 
certify himself of the correctness of his own greatest and wisest determinations. 



iETAT. 30.] THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. 53 

But Judge Marshall's sense appeared to bo at once both iustinctive and ana- 
lytical : his logic extended as far as his perception : he had no propositions in 
his thoughts which ho could not resolve into their axioms. Truth came to 
him as a revelation, and from him as a demonstration. His mind was moro 
than the faculty of vision ; it was a body of light, which irradiated the subject 
to which it was directed, .and rendered it as distinct to every other cyo as it 
was to its own. 

"The mental integrity of this illustrious man was not the least important 
element of his greatness. Those qualities of vanity, fondness for display, the 
love of eflect, the solicitation of applause, sensibility to opinions, which arc 
the immoralities of intellect, never attached to that stainless essence of pure 
reason. He seemed to men to be a passionless intelligence ; susceptible to no 
feeling but the constant love of right; subject to no affection but a polarity 
toward truth." 

Of JNIr. Legarc Mr. Griswold says : 

" The impression left by his collected writings is, that his mind was of the 
first order, but that it did not hold in that order a very prominent place. Ho 
had that rectitude of judgment, that pervading good sense, that constant natu- 
ral sympathy with truth, which is a characteristic of the best class of intellects, 
but he was wanting in richness, fervor, and creative vigor. Ho possessed the 
forms of fine understanding, but tho force of intellectual passion, or the fire 
of genius, are not found. His perception of truth was superior to his power 
of illustrating it. We follow the difiicult and somewhat languid processes of 
his thoughts, and, surprised at last at finding him in possession of such 
admirable opinions on all subjects, we imagine that he must have discovered 
his conclusions by different faculties from those which he uses to demonstrate 
them. That splendid fusion of reason, imagination, and feeling, which con- 
stitutes the inspiration of the great, is not visible ; the display is meagre, 
laborious, and painful. He fills tho measure of his subject, but it is by tho 
utmost stretch of his abilities ; we do not observe the abounding power, tho 
exuberant resources, tho superfluous energy, which mark the foremost of the 
first. 

"In his own profession Mr. Legar6 had, with many, discredited his repu- 
tation by the devotion which he avowed to the civil law. It is understood 
that no one who has been able thoroughly to master and comprehend the 
common law, is disposed to give much time to the civilians. I am inclined to 
believe that no man ever yet took up the Code, because having sounded the 
common law through its depths, he had found it wanting : many have cheaply 
sought the praise of having gone through tho common law, by appearing to 
have attained to something beyond it, upon tho principle that if you ' quoto 
Lycophron, they will take it for granted that you have read Homer.' In 
Mr. Legar6's case, such suspicions are probably without justice. Ho was 
attracted to the 'first collection of written reason' chiefly by the interest 
which the scholar feels in that mnjestic pliilosophy of morals which is tho 
'imperium sine fine' of Rome. His remarks in a review of Kent's Com- 

5* 



54 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

mentaries, show that he understood what advantages the common law had 
attained over the civil law, as a practical system, by its constant regard for 
certainty, convenience and policy. As a common lawyer, Mr. Legar6 was 
respectable ; and in great cases, his elaborate style of preparation made him 
a formidable opponent. 

" As a statesman I think the finest monument of his powers is his speech in 
Congress on the Sub-Treasury. It is formal, elementary, and scholastic, but 
able, and at times brilliant. His politics, as displayed in various essays and 
reviews, were profound and iutelligent; but it always seemed as if he had 
settled his views of the present times upon opinions derived from history, and 
not that, like Machiavelli, he had informed his judgment on occurrences in 
history by suggestions drawn from his own observation. Still, by any method 
to have formed sound principles on government and society, in the unfavorable 
circumstances in which he was placed, was an indication of extraordinary 
powers. He triumphed over disadvantages of position, connections, and 
party ; and was among the wisest men of the South. Yet he appears, like 
Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Ames, to have been of a too desponding temperament ; 
to have magnified dangers that threatened our young energies, and to have 
lacked faith in our system, after it had passed some of the strongest trials to 
which it was reasonable to suppose it would ever be subjected. 

" As a classical scholar Mr. Legare made great pretension, but there is 
nothing in his works to prove that he was here superior or even equal to several 
of his countrymen. His proficiency partook of the dryness and severity of his 
character. He studied rather as a grammarian than as a man of taste. He 
may have been accurate, but he was not elegant. He writes often about the 
Greeks and Latins, but he had never caught the spirit and sentiment of classical 
enthusiasm. Wo miss the fine felicity of illustration, the apt quotation, the 
brilliant allusion, which are so attractive in the writings of one whose heart 
and fancy have dwelt familiarly in the clime of antiquity. He is not betrayed 
as a visitor to the halls of the past by the smell of aloes and cassia hanging about 
his garments, caught from the ivory palaces whereby they have made him glad. 
We know the fact by his constantly informing us of it, and because he describes 
the localities with the precision of one who must have observed, chiefly for the 
purpose of making a report. The most striking passage in his writings on a 
classical subject is that relating to Catullus, in his criticism of Dunlap's His- 
tory of Ancient Literature. The remarks on that poet are original, beautiful, 
and undoubtedly just." 

But our limits forbid us to pursue more extensively this sur- 
vey of American writers. Of Longfellow, Sanderson, Hooker, 
Hoffman, and others, Mr. Griswold has given interesting and 
generally accurate estimates ; and as he always presents a speci- 
men of the author whom he judges, so as to submit himself to the 
test of direct verification by the reader, he deserves to be called, 
since Luke Milbom*no, "the fairest of critics," 



^TAT. 29.] FOREST LEAVES, AXl^ OTHER POEMS. 55 

The data which he gives are sufficient to bring before the 
reader the history of American letters through the departments 
of Statesmanship, Philosophy and Religion, as well as the 
history, condition and prospects of our Legal, Historical, Ro- 
mantic, JEsthetical and Miscellaneous literature ; and to show 
the justness of his assumption, that thus far, despite of all that 
has been said to the contrary and in the face of all the confessed 
obstacles to our intellectual progress, we have done more than 
any other nation, for the same term of time, in the various fields 
of investigation, reflection, imagination and taste. 

We take leave with the renewal of our thanks to the editor for 
the spirit which prompted, and our respect for the talents and 
tempers which have guided, his labors. He has tiiumphed over 
many difficulties ; and we have pleasure in commending his work 
to the perusal of all who are interested in literature and criticism. 



Forest Leaves, and Other Poems. By Mns. Lydia Pearson. 

A VOICE from the forest ! or, rather, a pleasant sound of many 
voices, swelling in plaintive chaunt through the solitary woods 
at evening, and throbbing in delicate echoes against the hills — 
kept in tune by the harmony of an uniform sentiment, whose 
key-note still is melancholy ! Nor to us does it seem wonderful, 
that the harp-strings of a " s'p'ivit finely touched," should answer 
to the varying airs of fortune with notes forever sad. The world, 
said one of its true worldlings, is a comedy for them that think, 
and a tragedy to those that feel : we might add, that, to the 
feeling heart, thought serves for little else . than to open new 
passages to sympathy, and discover remoter sources of pain. 
Life — " which, to every one that breathes, is full of care" — must 
bring to one inheriting, as this lady does, the darkly-glorious 
dower of genius, such shows, such glimpses, such suggestions of 
fear and sadness, as the rough and bustling never dream of. So 
refined an atmosphere of sensibility as attends a nature like 
hers, must be often dimmed by clouds, whose duskiness is owing, 
not to their own thickness, but to the exquisite purity of the 



56 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JEt.vt. 29. 

medium in which they are formed. " If yoa listen to David's 
harp, touched by the Holy Ghost," says Bacon, " you shall hear 
as many hearse-like airs as carolings ;" and to those prophet- 
souls Avho partake a portion of the depth and foresight of the 
Divine existence, for whom a veil is riven, it may well seem as if 
a dirge was the only tribute proper for the past, and a lamenta- 
tion the fit herald of the future. 

We have heard it objected, as a kind of moral fault against 
this gentle and tender poet, that the tone of her verse is sombre ; 
and we would defend her from so strange a reproach, by ob- 
serving that the pensiveness which is complained of, is twin-bom 
with the power which ought to be admired, and is inseparable 
from it. But there are readers enough to whom this plaintive 
tone vdll be welcome. Clouds are things common enough in 
the heaven of every man's prosperity ; the ray which can turn 
those clouds into spots of glory, and spectacles of magnificence, 
is not common. 



Memoir of the Life and Character of Philip Syng Physic, M. D. By 
J. Randolph, M. D. 

We have been much gratified by this notice of one to whose 
professional sagacity, in former years, we were weightily be- 
holden, and of whose disinterested kindness we shall always 
retain a grateful remembrance. It is a memorial of the great- 
est physician of the last generation, written by an accomplished 
one of this. It is able, discriminating and valuable. Our own 
recollections enable us to verify many features in the portrait. 
The career of the remarkable person who is the subject of this 
interesting sketch furnishes an illustration of the unquestionable 
truth, that to the constitution of a great practical understanding, 
moral qualities must contribute even more largely than intel- 
lectual ones. Indeed, in contemplating the ability of a man of 
the first order of professional power, we are at a loss, many 
times, to determine whether the peculiarities which make his 
superiority, ought to be referred to one class or to the other. 
In those lofty regions of sincere greatness, the two blend to- 



^TAT. 29.] PHILIP SYN(i PHYSIC, M. D. 57 

gether into one. Those who looked at Dr. Physic, unreflect- 
ingly, might have thought that his capacity consisted in his 
habits : that it was in the obstinate scrutiny into the facts of his 
cases — in his prolonged and unresting consideration of those 
facts — and the earnest, almost devoted attention with which 
every case was followed up — that the true secret of the marvellous 
skill of this extraordinary man might be found. But that would 
have been to confound the power itself, with the conditions 
under which the development of that power necessarily took 
place : it would have been to mistake the elements which a plant 
appropriates from the air and earth in aid of its growth, for the 
living principle of the plant itself. The truth is, that the mental 
vigor of Dr. Physic was of the rarest and truest kind : his in- 
tellect was wonderfully quick and far-ranging in its suggestions, 
thorough in its processes, and fearless in its conclusions ; but 
those mental habits of caution, patience and inquiry, were the 
only medium in which these qualities could work out their best 
and perfect display. Uncontrolled by that discipline, they would 
have resulted in an ability splendid and impracticable ; but they 
would not have filled the sphere of the most illustrious pro- 
fessional excellence, in medicine, that this country has ever wit- 
nessed. It must be remembered that the power to examine 
)ninutely and reflect slowly, is, itself, a species of genius ; and, 
perhaps, the highest. There is a class of natures, whose intel- 
lectual action is of an electrical kind — instant, intense and 
momentary: there is another sort, in whom the accumulation 
of mental energy is given forth with the gradual, steady and 
continuous flow of a galvanic current. One is more startling and 
impressive ; the useful power of the other is greater ; both are 
equally divine. The well-known observation of Sir Isaac N'ewton, 
in relation to himself, would indicate that he is to be classed, 
with Dr. Physic, in the latter rank. 

Elegant and satisfactory as Dr. Kandolph's Memoir is, in 
reference to the design and purpose which he contemplated, we 
confess that we are hardly willing that the name of this extra- 
ordinary and admirable man should go down to future times 
without a memorial of a different and more minute and detailed 



68 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

kind — such an exposition of the particulars of his life and con- 
duct, we mean, as can be given only by a copious biography, 
bringing together everything that journals, correspondence, or 
the recollections of others, can furnish for the completion and 
illustration of the portraiture. We are aware that Dr. Physic 
was unwilling that his private letters and papers should be laid 
before the public ; and this reluctance was characteristic of a 
man who was as modest as he was able — whose sensitiveness in 
all that concerned himself was as keen, as his energy in sup- 
pressing it, where it might be prejudicial to others, was manly 
and noble. But it has been doubted by many how far, in any 
case, the commands of the dead should operate as clogs upon 
the living, when the interests of society are in question : for 
ourselves, we think that when a prohibition of this kind has been 
prompted only by the extreme sensibilities of the person's own 
diffidence, it ought at least to be construed with the utmost 
strictness. We often violate the orders of the living when they 
tend to the unjust suppression of their proper praise and reward, 
and suppose it to be an act of duty on our part to do so. We 
would recommend the limits of Dr. Physic's order on this sub- 
ject, to be very critically examined, and the best advice to be 
taken as to the necessity, in point of propriety and good faith, 
of being governed by it : for not without something like a 
moral necessity, would we forego the benefit of giving to the 
world, by the publication of letters and other documents, an 
exhibition of the manner in which this great man lived among 
his contemporaries, diffusing benefits and receiving gratitude — 
of the extent of his professional generosity — the incorruptible 
integrity of his motives — and, above all, the unremitting in- 
tenseness with which the obligations of professional responsi- 
bility rested upon his conscience, as a necessity of his nature, 
and almost as a condition of his existence. This lesson, so 
invaluable in this country, and at this time, is the most rarely 
given. For it happens, unfortunately, though perhaps as a na- 
tural result of things, that it is this class, of which the personal 
character and private history would be studied by the world at 
large, with the very highest interest and advantage, whose 



^TAT. 29.] PHILIP SYNG PHYSIC, M. D, 59 

biographies are the most seldom written, at least with any con- 
siderable degree of minuteness and precision. The history of a 
soldier, or a man of letters, may be said, to some extent, to 
write itself : the former, in those actions which remain as monu- 
ments among mankind, and the latter, in those productions 
which bear upon their surface the evidence and the measure 
of all that was extraordinary in him from whom they proceeded. 
But the qualities that work themselves out in a great py^ofcs- 
sional career, such as that of an eminent lawyer or physician, 
are of a less distinct and manifest sort. Silent, complex, gradual 
in their influence, their combined effect is seen in the command- 
ing character which attracts the confidence, and sways with 
unacknowledged but boundless control, the minds and feelings 
of the community ; but the definite, individual form and nature 
of these properties in their true analysis, can be known entirely 
by those only who have witnessed their operation long and 
inspected their relations closely. But, either the skill to note, 
or the disposition to follow, or the leisure to record observa- 
tions of this kind, is commonly wanting among the friends of 
these eminent persons : and the interesting knowledge of that 
discipline by which the character has slowly been constructed, 
of the uses l)y which its perfection has been kept up, and the 
traits by which its peculiarities were wont to illustrate them- 
selves — which tlie philosopher might profitably have inspected, 
and which the student of morals would have loved to linger 
upon. — is lost forever ; .society retaining nothing of the richest 
treasure that it possessed, save the empty name by which it was 
surrounded. In the few instances in which a complete picture 
of the private life and daily conduct of an eminent professional 
man has been given to the public — as in the recent case of Lord 
Eldon's life — the theme has awakened an interest not inferior to 
that which attends the narrative of the most stirring deeds. In 
the case of Dr. Physic, if it can be considered as a task proper 
to be vmdertaken, no man would be more proper to do it than 
Dr. Randolph himself. His mind has been schooled in the pro- 
fessional learning of two continAts : he has added the best 
suggestions of the science of the old world to the varied expe- 



60 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

rieuce of the new ; and is fitted by intelligence, acquisitions and 
situation, to do justice to all the excellence of the subject. The 
undertaking would be equally safe in the hands of Dr. J. K. 
Mitchell, so well and honorably known to our whole country as 
one of the most eminent of its physicians, and specially known 
to the younger portion of our medical practitioners, of whom so 
many have received instruction at his hands, as the accomplished 
Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Jeffer- 
son Medical College of Philadelphia. He holds the pen of a 
scholar and a man of genius. Saved by his own merited dis- 
tinction from any liability to professional or personal jealousies, 
he would approach the subject with "that candor which," ac- 
cording to a great authority, " always accompanies great abili- 
ties :" and the want of that minute information in respect to 
many things, which only a contemporary experience could 
bestow, would be supplied in him, to a. great extent, by the 
superior "ardor of sympathetic genius." We commend the 
suggestion, heartily, to the consideration of these gentlemen. 



The Poems of Fitz-Greene Halleck. New York, Harpers. 

The dominion of poetry is as boundless as the race. Of her 
sceptre less cannot be said, than that its heritage is the sove- 
reignty of the world, its possession the loyalty of every human 
heart. Various, therefore, of necessity, and diversified as the 
nature of man, are the shapes, and aspects, and characters, in 
which are put forth the manifestations of that influence which 
means to be triumphant wherever it is exerted. For ourselves, 
we profess a worship as catholic as the spirit of this changeful 
deity ; for every form she takes, we own a separate taste. Poetry 
is, to us, like the enchanting mistress of a youthful cavalier, 
whose figure fascinates in every dress, whose features charm in 
all their moods. Whether this glorious child of heaven — majestic 
in exalting loveliness, unfolds her snowy robes upon the breezes 
of the evening, and, floating off from the earth, a re-ascended 



^TAT. 29.] POEMS OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 61 

goddess, smiles down upon us from the golden sky of Spenser's 
imagination — or, whether, with Milton, she expands the soul 
into a vast and solemn cathedral, in which every mortal thought, 
and sentiment, and sensibility, bows down in awe, while the 
sounding inspiration rolls along the columned roof — and swells 
through every aisle, and passage, and gallery of human con- 
sciousness — or, like Shakspeare, exhibits no picture to us, but 
the real earth, made glorious through the medium of intense 
imagination — or, with Dryden's nervous hand, strikes from the 
lyre the ringing tones of manly sense and earnest passion — or, 
like Pope, masking divinity in the familiar and the mortal, and 
hiding celestial sensibilities beneath the lawn and velvet of a 
court-costume, she fashions the heaven-shed essence of immortal 
truth into glittering shafts of wit, and uses the choicest pearls 
from the paradisal streams of inspiration, for missiles to assail 
the multitude — whether, in some one of these, or in yet another 
of her myriad guises, her presence enriches the breeze with 
fragrance, or makes golden the air of common thought and daily 
feeling — we claim an ability to know, and an inclination to 
acknowledge her, as the apparent deity and queen of human 
sensibility. In some aspects, undoubtedly, she is more im- 
pressive to different persons than she is in others : to us, she 
approaches, iu all her pomp of charms, and in the fullest luxu- 
riance of attractions, when she seizes the trumpet of the lyric 
muse, and sounds forth a strain that "bids the heavens be 
mute." 

Fitz-Greene Halleck I — The Tyrtceus of America — ac- 
knowledged master of the western lyre ! — a magic name to us, 
for it comes charged with all the remembered and still vital 
enthusiasms of youth, and passion, and genial admiration. The 
critics may rehearse the praises of modern English bards, and we 
shall suffer them in patience ; but until we have forgotten the 
intense surprise and joy with which we first heard "at school," 
the gorgeous yet simple ode of "Bozzaris," and learned that its 
author was a modern, and an American ; or can read the lines 
of "Alnwick Castle," or " Alloway Kirk," or those on the death 
of Drake, without a tumult of emotions, we must be permitted 
6 



62 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

to reply to all their eulogies — "Beneath the Lesbian singer!" — 
"That poetry is the best, which moves us most, and which 
comes nearest to God, who is the source of all power." We 
say, also, that that is the best which has the most simplicity ; 
which is the most effective with the greatest directness; and 
reaches the highest flights of fancy with the least sacrifice of 
nature and truth. That power of pleasure which springs into 
our bosoms from the lines of Halleck, does not arise from remote 
combinations of thought or novel shapes of art, but from general 
and genuine feelings being disengaged in absolute entireness, 
and shot forth with the intenseness of perfect purity, and from 
the plain and ordinary phrases of daily language being charged 
and vivified with all the energy with which human speech can 
swell. He does not seek to reclude those sacred fountains of 
the moral muse, whose hidden sources can be unsealed only by 
the finger of philosophy ; nor does he labor to subtilize emotion 
into the finest exquisiteness of thought, or impart the sensu- 
ousness of art to the quaintest apprehension of the metaphysical 
faculty — but, musing within his own heart, like the royal 
psalmist, in moody earnestness of passion, at length the fire 
kindles, and, rugged, vehement and irresistible, the blazing 
words leap forth in music, as the bolt leaps from the sombre 
cloud, illustrating all the sublimity of light, and sound, and 
motion. 

The style of composition to which the powers of Halleck have 
been devoted, is capable of the highest and severest polish, and 
it so happens that many of those English poets who have ex- 
celled in it — Gray, Campbell, Collins, and, with less vigor than 
any of them, Wordsworth — have possessed and put forth the 
most extraordinary powers of delicate and faultless finish. Mere 
substantial strength will lift a work of art far up into the 
empyrean of renown; but nothing can set it safe against the 
shocks, and pressures, and attritions of time, but the smoothing 
down of every roughness, the rounding off of every turn, and 
the rubbing away of every adhering defect. Finish is, to works 
of art, the enamel which defies tlie corrosion of ages. 

Harpers' edition of Halleck's Poems is, in respect to appear- 



^TAT. 29.] PAPERS OF OLIVER WOLCOTT. 63 

ance, worthy of the poet, and creditable to the gentlemen from 
whose press it proceeds. The gratification of the senses has so 
much to do with even the mental perception of the beauties 
of works of elegant taste, that a poet ought to consider the style 
of publication of his works, part of the works themselves. A 
poem ill-printed, is like an overture badly played. The finest 
performance cannot redeem a musical composition essentially 
worthless ; but a slovenly execution may destroy the effect of 
the noblest harmonies that ever flowed from the genius of a 
composer. 



Memoirs of the Administrations of "Washington and John Adams. Edited 
from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury. By George 
GiBBS. In two vols. New York, printed for the Subscribers, 1846. Phila- 
delphia, sold by John Penington. 

The events which secured to this country a popular constitu- 
tion as a possession forever, made every American a member of 
the most difficult, responsible and dignified profession which the 
ability or virtue of man can illustrate — the profession of politics. 
By the fundamental law of the government we are all " heredi- 
tary statesmen;" we are all advisers and active directors of the 
administration. " La vie du phis simple particulier dans une 
rSpublique,'^ said the elder and wiser of the JVIirabeaus, " est plus 
compliquee que celle d'un liomme en place dans une monarchie." 
Of this calling of politics may be said what Augustus Schlegel 
has said of authorship, that according to the spirit in which it is 
pursued, it is an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an 
art, a science, a virtue. It is of the first importance to society, 
and every one in it, that the character and tone of this profes- 
sion should be raised, and maintained at an elevation ; that its 
members should be capable of dealing in it with competent 
ability, and with that temper of confidence that rejects and de- 
spises tricks and intrigue ; that they should be always feeling 
that it involves principles, and not merely personalities ; that it 
is a great moral and intellectual science, in which passions and 
interests must play in perpetual subordination to the permanent 



64 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

laws of wisdom and truth ; and that all its acts and all its con- 
tests stand in such intimate relations with the lofty interests 
of human virtue and human greatness, that the humblest efforts 
in its cause partake of dignity, and its least rewards are truly 
honorable. Nothing would open and ventilate the politics of 
this day more happily — raise, expand and purify them — give 
them higher significance and greater weight, than a study of the 
characters and actions of tJiose who founded our constitution, 
and watched over the earliest development of its principles. To 
comprehend the distinction and the permanent relation between 
the great parties that have divided and will always divide this 
country, it is indispensable to resort to the conferences and the 
conduct of those who, in the brighter and better time of the 
commonwealth, explored the depths of that subject with the 
sagacity of philosophers, and illustrated its extent upon the 
largest scale of statemanship. If we would learn how to wage 
war, and not to huckster it — if we would see the difference be- 
twixt that kind of diplomacy which is suggested by honor and 
conducted by wisdom, and that kind which for paltry ends 
employs the wretched arts alternately to bubble and to bully. — 
the pul)lic history and the private writings of those who formed 
the entourage of Washhigton will afford us important in- 
struction. * 

" I am not fonder of simpletons in politics than other people 
are," says M. Capefigue, " but, for the honor of mankind, I am 
willing to believe that men may be clever and still retain perfect 
probity and good faith." This difficult art, to carry into public 
life the morals and the sentiments that give grace to private 
character ; to join sincerity and directness of personal demeanor 
with effectiveness and force of political action ; to gain the out- 
ward with neither soilure nor loss of a more sacred excellence 
within, seemed to be the native inspiration of these extraordinary 
men. They formed a band of " Happy Warriors :" 

"Whose high endeavors were an inward liglit 
That made the path before them always bright. 
More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure 
As tempted more : 



iETAT. 29.] PAPERS OF OLIVER WOLCOTT. 65 

Who in a state where men are tempted still 
To evil for a guard against worse ill, 
And what in quality or act is best 
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, 
Still fixed good on good alone, and owe 
To virtue every triumph that they know." 



Mr. Wolcott was one of the most sterling of this illustrious 
company : and the respect and coniidence which he enjoyed, in 
an eminent degree, on the part of his greatest contemporaries, 
such as Hamilton, Ames and Marshall, have enabled his de- 
scendant to present to the public a correspondence of remark- 
able extent and value. He Jiad not the inventive, or rather the 
creative faculties which enabled Hamilton to institute that 
system of finance which brought the nation out of bankruptcy, 
and has kept it from recurring to it ; but he had a perfect com- 
prehension of the principles upon which it was to be administered, 
and executive talents probably not inferior to those of Mr. 
Hamilton himself. On the death of Mr. Eveleigh, Hamilton 
solicited from Washington the elevation of Wolcott from the 
post of auditor to that of comptroller of the Treasury, and used 
this language in his letter to the President: — "Mr. Wolcott 's 
conduct in the station he now fills has been that of an excellent 
officer. It has not only been good, but distinguished. It has 
combined all the requisites that can be desired ; moderation 
with firmness, liberality with exactness, indefatigable industry 
with an accurate and sound discernment, a thorough knowledge 
of business, and a remarkable spirit of order and arrangement. 
Indeed, I ought to say that I owe very much of whatever suc- 
cess may have attended the merely executive operations of the 
department to Mr. Wolcott." That such commendation should 
have introduced the subject of it to the highest honors Avhich 
Washington could bestow, was equally honorable to Mr. Ham- 
ilton and Mr. Wolcott. 

Mr. Gibbs has written, of course, with something of inherited 
partiality for the system of which his ancestor formed a promi- 
nent part ; but his work makes no departure from candor or 
fairness. The documents which he gives to the world certainly 



gg LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

bear with not trifling weight upon some men around whose 
names the honor of the nation still lingers ; the tone of the pub- 
lication is decidedly in favor of one set of persons and against 
their adversaries : but, upon a careful review, we cannot discover 
that the biographer has, by arguments or suggestions of his 
own, changed or disturbed the impression which the documents 
themselves produce. He has been faithful to disclose the evi- 
dence on which his comments are founded, and, while he enforces 
it, we cannot perceive that he departs from its true character. 
The arrangement of the materials is judicious, and the narrative 
portions possess considerable brilliancy. The work is highly 
creditable to Mr. Gibbs in a literary point of view, and may be 
regarded altogether as decidedly the most valuable contribu- 
tion that has been made to our historical literature in several 
years.* 

■•■■ In no part of our national literature did the j'outhful author of these 
papers take a more sincere interest than in that which would do honor to the 
founders and first administrator of our Republic, by the publication of their 
yet inedited correspondence. His own MS. collections on this subject are 
of an incredible extent, considering how much his short life was engaged by 
other subjects. Indeed, he had drafted the " Protocol of a Society for the 
publication of letters and other documents of the AVar of the Revolution," an 
association which he was about to organize, and a sketch of which is given in 
an Appendix (A.), as a suggestion for others on this subject. 

The commendation above given of Mr. Gibbs's valuable work, was thrown 
off for some sheet of the day. In a familiar letter he expresses himself as 
follows: "It is gratifying to find that the truth is at last beginning to ba 
spoken in an audible tone about the parties and the men that distinguished 
the early days of our republic. There are, probably, ten thousand persons in 
the United States who, in their private minds, think about the Federalists pre. 
cisely as Mr. Gibbs has written; but utterance is never given to such senti. 
ments, except in a kind of confidential whisper, when two or three of them 
are met in social privacy. Mr. Gibbs has expressed the truth on these subjects, 
and what everybody knows to be the truth ; and, as an example of fearless 
declaration of the truth, his work deserves to receive commendation and sup- 
port. Nothing strikes me as of worse omen in the present condition of the 
country, than the circumstance that all parties have agreed to suppress all 
reference to Federal principles and policy, as a source of instruction and a 
guide in action. If redemption is ever to come to the honor and integrity 
of the national administration— if the country is ever to be recovered from 
the degradation under which it labors — if a high tone is ever again to be 



^TAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVINGf. g'j 

Washington Irving: his Works, Genius, and Character. 

In nature, in personal character, and in every department of 
art, there is a quality of excellence which, even in the degree 
of its perfection, disappoints the efforts of description, and 
eludes the analysis of the critic, because it consists, not in the 
magnitude, energy, or splendor of the separate elements, but in 

given to the counsels and the couduct of the government — the elevating and 
restoring influence must proceed from a recurrence to the wisdom, the purity, 
and the loftiness of aim, and temper, and motive, in which the Constitution 
was founded, and the Union at first conducted. Those who still can feel the 
ineffable disgrace of such a rule as we were subject to until John Tyler and 
his party were driven from the capitol, must convince themselves of the truth 
of Machiavelli's remark, that, in the decline of a state, it is necessary often to 
revert to the first principles upon which it was founded, for we must know 
the beginning of our greatness, if we would ever come to the end of our errors. 
We must re-organize the Federal party; not from any hope of gaining thereby 
possession of the government, but for the purpose of bringing the weight of an 
united public opinion to act upon the politics of the country. The indirect 
control which might thus be exercised over an administration, would be of 
immense service. The power of truth and honor, in every community, is very 
great, if there be somebody in the foreground to represent them, to invoke 
attention to them, to give voice to their judgments upon resolutions and 
measures. 

" Gibbs's book, you will find, contains many important documents, now given 
to the public for the first time. Wolcott was on terms of close ofEcial and 
personal relation with most of those who made that period an age of so much 
greatness ; and the correspondence of Hamilton, Ames, and Marshall, neces- 
sarily gives us an enlarged acquaintance with the design and characters of 
those who then commanded the confidence and respect of the nation. The more 
I learn of these extraordinary men, thei more nearly I am brought to see their 
universal intelligence, their various and ready abilities, and their high and 
earnest patriotism, the more I am impressed with admiration, and the more 
earnestly I desire to have every record and every monument of their greatness 
brought out to the knowledge and attention of the country. There are many 
collections of papers yet in private hands, which the owners are willing to 
make public, but have not ability to do so. There ought to be a fund connected 
with the Historical Societies of Philadelphia and New York, for the purpose 
of printing the correspondence of early statesmen ; or, at least, of aiding in 
the publication. A moderate annual subscription to such a fund, by membera 
and others, would enable the society to rescue many valuable collections, 
which are now hidden in obscurity, and which in a few years will be entirely 
destroyed, to the unavailing rcgi-ct of all who come after us." — Ed. 



68 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33. 

the exquisiteness of the proportion, the harmony of the combi- 
nation, the fineness of the pervading tone, the gentle animation 
with which it flatters each sympathy into delighted calmness, 
and wakes no uncomfortable earnestness of reaction. It ab- 
sorbs and holds all our sensibilities, yet seems to be below, 
rather than above, the measure of power, with which our minds 
are familiar, and to fall within the range of our own ambition, 
desire, or conception. More admiration would disturb the 
repose of our satisfaction ; a more vigorous address to our 
intellectual apprehension would change the nature of the 
enjoyment. The ordinary degrees of this character we call the 
agreeable; the more poignant exhibitions of it we qualify as 
charming. 

To this class or order belong especially the writings of Mr. 
Irving. Their effect is uniformly pleasant : — we read with per- 
petual interest, and with the certainty of delight. Yet are we 
scarcely inclined to commend anything else than the general 
and composite impression resultant from the whole.. We are 
impressed with no very vivid respect for the author's mental 
powers or accomplishments, and carry away no decided impres- 
sions of vigorous or dexterous or felicitous effort. We are a little 
annoyed at being called upon for the reasons of our exclama- 
tions of pleasure. If asked our opinion of him, in the absence 
of his works, our impulse would perhaps be to speak some- 
what depreciatingly. Yet while we read we were fascinated ; 
and the enchantment shall assuredly renew itself so often as 
we come within the action of the strains that " lap us in Ely- 
sium." They are productions which communicate pleasure, 
rather than excite enthusiasm, and are more enjoyed than eulo- 
gized. The mystery of the performer seems to consist, not in 
creating an extraordinary work, but in pre-disposing us, by 
some magic touch, to be ravished with that which is not 
greatly remote from common and moderate. The perusal 
of Mr. Irving's writings is like walking in some familiar 
lawn, or ordinary scene of nature, on a fine, soft morning in the 
early spring. Usual sights are around us, accustomed olijects 
greet our senses; but to our transported nature they seem to 



JEtat. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. 69 

be invested with influences, spiritual in their fineness, and spi- 
ritual in their power. A baptism from on high seems to descend 
upon our being, and to regenerate it into the vivid delicacy of 
childhood's sensibilities ; and sense, as it transmits to the mind 
the impressions of outward things, refracts them into splendor. 
The grass is edged with a bright, glittering green that fairly 
bewilders the sight ; the budding trees impregnate the air with 
a vital richness, which is not an odor, yet is rarer and more 
intoxicating than all odors ; the cloudless sky, like an expanse 
of airy waters, wafting our consciousness into paradise, spreads 
around us, rather than above us ; the woodsman's axe, the mur- 
mur of the full stream, the lowing of cattle, — ^for sounds seem 
to be enchanted' into wandering messengers of eternity — startle 
us with weird impressions that carry us beyond the confines of 
the material, the limited and the mortal. A lustrous atmos- 
phere brings out each object truly, yet under such strong, aerial 
perspective, as renders everything picture-like. The softness 
of a dream envelopes the scene ; but " the glory and the fresh- 
ness" of an existence as much more fervent than reality, as 
reality itself is more fervent than a dream. 

The acceptableness of Mr. Irving's works — the peculiar at- 
traction which they have for every class of readers — illustrates 
an important truth in criticism, too much overlooked by writers, 
that in literature, more depends on manner than on style ; and 
manner is an affair of the character more than of the intellect. 
Power, however great, if it be turbulent and unchastised, stimu- 
lates the passions while it impresses the mind ; its moral influ- 
ence excites more appetency than its mental action satisfies ; 
and it leaves the reader disappointed and discontented in the 
very measure in which he has been moved. On the other hand, 
there is a tone of decency, decorum, refined reserve, and inten- 
tional restraint in composition, which induces in the reader an 
answering concentration and restriction in feeling, by which he 
is in a situation to enjoy quiet and moderate interests with a 
delight at once earnest and calm. Something akin to this is 
felt in the company of high-bred people. The temper of mode- 
rated animation, the controlled and self-guarding attention, the 



70 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^.tat, 33. 

avoidance of strong efforts, and the care witli which each one 
seems to play below his full power, the subdued key to which 
everything is pitched, tends to create in each person a certain 
strenuous repose of the feelings which causes commonplace 
things in such a sphere to inspire pleasure and respect. That 
state in which sensibility is excited, and then voluntarily checked 
and drawn back upon itself, is the one of greatest impressibility 
to what is beautiful and intellectual. How remarkable and how 
delightful is the moral charm diffused by the mere personal de- 
portment of a refined and thorough-bred gentleman ! Very 
much like that is the spell of retiring dignity and elegant reserve 
which fascinates in Mr. Irving's writings. And when this sort 
of manner is found in conjunction with essential genius and 
genuine finished art, as in his case it undoubtedly is, the delight 
becomes as irresistible as it is undefiuable. 

Mr. Irving possesses but little invention. The attractiveness of 
his tales does not depend upon their material, upon their construc- 
tion, upon the novelty, variety, or impressiveness of their incidents, 
upon an anxious crisis or a brilliant denouement, but upon the 
illustrative talent of the narrator, upon the innumerable occasional 
decorations that delight us into a forgetfulnes's of the purpose 
or want of purpose of the whole, and the pleasant sketches of 
costume, scenery, and manners which are hung along the con- 
duct of the piece in such profusion, that it resembles at length 
a brilliant gallery of pictures, built for the display of its own 
treasures, and not to lead to some definite end. His concep- 
tion of beauty is not rich or exquisite. In sentiment he is com- 
monplace, dilute, and superficial. Of earnest, deep feeling, he 
can scarcely be said to have anything at all. Intellectual force 
or moral sensibility contribute little to his works. But let us 
not, therefore, suppose that those works are commonplace pro- 
ductions, or the author of them an ordinary person. Let us not 
imagine that because we cannot detect the seat of a power, or 
define its nature, components, or origin, — ^nay, because we can 
touch this point, and say it is not here, or knock upon that sur- 
face, and find for a response, that it issues not thence, — that any 
doubt is thrown upon the greatness, genuineness, or elevation of 



^TAT. 33,] WASHINGTON IRVING. "jl 

that power. In literature, and especially in that fine region in 
which the genius of Mr. Irving moves, the more subtle and 
elusive the interest is, the more exalted and consummate is the 
art ; the more evanescent the charm, the more potent is it, the 
more certain, and the more enduring. In such a department 
of pure art, to accomplish the greatest result with the least 
visible display of exertion, is the highest triumph. To impress, 
and conceal the source of the impression, is mastery in its ut- 
most. When once we are assured that a work is certainly im- 
pressive, the difficulty of detecting the reason of that impressive- 
ness enhances the glory of the production. We may talk of 
the slightness of Mr. Irving's composition ; it is easy to make 
compositions as slight, but not easy to make slightness so 
effective. 

Beauty is a thing of form and place ; it may be detected, and 
analyzed, and reproduced. But infinitely higher and grander 
in its range, degree, and order, than beauty, is grace ; and that 
is an unsubstantial and unlocal essence. Beauty resides, 
definitely, in the work in which it is recognized; gi-ace is an 
electric light evolved by the action of successive parts of the 
subject upon the mind. It is experimental, and not demonstra- 
tive. Certain and absolute in its action upon refined sensibili- 
ties, when searched out by the critical eye it is a nervous, flitting, 
evasive thing. It is the true Galatea of taste, which strikes us 
in spite of our will, and when we turn to seize it, has fled from 
our sight, and becomes visible only as it vanishes. It is on this 
account that ordinary critics, whose minds are always more 
active than their sentiments are delicate, generally fail to appre- 
hend and appreciate this exalted quality. It is the source of 
that fresh, delightful fragrance which always exhales from Irving's 
writings. 

In noting, therefore, the absence of great and commanding 
intellectual force, it will not be thought that we esteem Mr. 
Irving lightly ; on the contrary, we regard him as an extra- 
ordinary and admirable artist, standing quite alone among his 
countrymen ; not likely ever to be neglected, or ever to be rivalled. 
Of the genius of his pencil we shall speak hereafter, but looking 



72 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33. 

at present only at the style and manner of his works, we find a 
grace as inherent as that of childhood ; a gentle gayety as vari- 
able yet as unfailing and as unfatiguing as the breezes of June ; 
an indestructible presence of good taste, simplicity, and ease; 
qualities which, in their separate conception, seem to be slight, 
yet, in their conjoint effect, are the splendor of fame and the 
power of immortality. What renders the merit more singular 
in Irving is, that successful and inimitable as the charm is, it is 
obviously not spontaneous or unconscious. In strenuous sim- 
plicity he almost equals the poet whose stream of verse reflects 
forever the dewy lustre of the morning of English civility; but 
what in the Pilgrim of Canterbury's scenes is the natural daz- 
zle of the hour, is, in Irving, clearly the noonday elaboration 
of profound and much-taught science. Such composition is, in 
a great degree, a process of rejection ; a labor of excision and 
exclusion, in which, however, excess is fatal ; and the full genius 
and true art of Irving can never be popularly understood, until 
we can see the weedings of the exquisite violet banks on which 
he gives us to repose and be intoxicated with purity of sensual 
bliss, or can analyze the lees of his cup of enchantment, which 
alone would disclose how composite is the formation of that 
liquor which, in its final distillation, is as clear and natural as 
the crystal gushings of the rock. The "mille decenter,^^ which 
can be seen only in the general effect, are of infinitely greater 
value than the "mille ornatus,''^ which the eye recognizes and 
registers. 

The prominent faculties in Mr. Irving's genius are Observa- 
tion and Fancy. When they act in conjunction, — when quick 
and lambent Fancy touches with its qufiint, kindling ray the 
fine particular truths which Observation has noted, — we have 
the brightest and most characteristic exhibitions of his powers. 

The minute delicacy of his observation of outward life is 
remarkal^le. The eye has been to him a potent instrument of 
literary fame ; it has played the part of a tireless gleaner in the 
fields of life, bringing in snatches of beauty and grace, trivial 
in themselves, but invaluable in their disposed and aggregated 
effect. Mr. Irving has obviously been through life a quiet yet 



iETAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. >y3 

busy watcher of the shapes, the colors, the changes of the land- 
scape, the figures of trees, the forms, motions, and habits of birds, 
the looks and ways of animals, the appearances and physical 
peculiarities of men. So exact and special, in many instances, 
are the lines of description, that we cannot but suppose that it 
has been his custom, in viewing objects, to make notes upon the 
spot, or immediately after, so as to preserve the precise pecu- 
liarities of things which were afterwards to be worked up in 
sketches. As the subjects of the exercise of this faculty in him, 
however, are usually familiar or domestic, and therefore not 
especially dignified, the traits of observation are mostly hued by 
humor, or heightened by sentiment, or grouped in some inventive 
combination ; and we meet few examples of incidents or scenes 
in nature, rendered with simple accui-acy, as by historical por- 
traiture of a real occurrence. Yet some such may be found, 
which challenge comparison with anything in literature, and 
which place the author in the highest class of faithful copyists 
of nature in her noblest simplicities, and of art in its most gor- 
geous complexity. The picture, in "Bracebridge Hall," of the 
eagle expelled from his resting-place, in the early morning, by 
the pinnace of Heer Antony Yander Heyden, among the High- 
lands of the Hudson, is unrivalled in correctness and power. 

"As they coasted along the basis of the mountains, the Heer Antony 
pointed out to Dolph a bald eagle, the sovereign of these regions, who sat 
perched on a dry tree that projected over the river, and, with eye turned up- 
wards, seemed to be drinking in the splendor of the morning sun. Their 
approach disturbed the monarch's meditations. He first spread one wing, and 
then the other; balanced himself for a moment, and then, quitting his perch 
with dignified composure, wheeled slowlj' over their heads. Dolph snatched 
up a gun, and sent a whistling ball after him, that cut some of the feathers 
from his wing. The report of the gun leaped sharply from rock to rock, and 
awakened a thousand echoes; but the monarch of the air sailed calmly on, 
ascending higher and higher, and wheeling widely as he ascended, soaring 
up the green bosom of the woody mountain, until he disappeared over the 
brow of a beetling precipice." 

We have beheld that striking and impressive sight amidst 
the mountains of the West, and this account of it is as accurate 
as it is effective. The description of Henry the Seventh's chapel, 
in"The Sketch Book," is equally remarkable in a very different 



Y4 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [iExAT. 33 

style. It is a true Dusseldorff picture, minute in detail, daz- 
zling in coloring, with a delightful bewilderment thrown over 
its actuality by cross-lights managed with consummate skill. 

Fancy, as we have said, is the principal and most active of 
the creative powers of Mr. Irving, and to its predominance are 
due alike his most surpassing excellences and his only defects. 
To that it is owing that as a picturesque painter of material 
life in all its familiar phases, he shines without an equal. To 
that is owing the perpetual charm of unwearying liveliness, 
which commends him to us as a companion in the longest soli- 
tudes, and the best entertainer of brief moments of vacuity or 
gloom. But to this, also, in the exclusive way in which it ex- 
ists in him, is owing that his works do little else than amuse ; 
and that, too, only the lower and less intellectual portions of 
our nature. We wish not to diminish the regard that is due 
to a writer who has delighted us too often to dispose us to criti- 
cism ; but in pleasing always he has foregone the possibility of 
pleasing ever in the highest degree ; and in making himself per- 
petually liked, he has consented never to be enthusiastically 
admired, nor perhaps deeply respected. For the excess and 
over-cultivation of fancy has been fatal to the exercise of the 
far greater faculty of imagination. Without staying to unfold 
the distinction between these two qualities in their entire nature, 
as seen in fiction, thought, feeling, and the whole action of 
intelligent man, we may note their diiference, as far as the pre- 
sent purpose requires, in reference to the field where, in this 
instance, the diversity is chiefly illustrated, namely, in descrip- 
tion. In an imaginative view of a scene, the mental conscious- 
ness of the person, or the moral character of the occasion, 
reacts upon the outward scene with such overpowering and 
transfusing energy, that all things around become but types 
and symbols, — nay, the very complements and visible parts, — 
of that which is within. You behold the scene, not as it is, 
but as it is felt or as it appears, — not in its actual condition, 
but as it is cast and reproduced in a speculum of thought or 
passion already warped or colored by the master emotion. 
Everything is subordinated to one prevailing sentiment. Ob- 



^TAT. 33.] ^YASHINGTON IRVING. 75 

jects are not viewed iu tlieir details, but each part is considered 
in reference to the whole, and colored by the notion of the 
whole. The spirit of totality and unity, derived from the 
singleness and intensity of the intellectual medium of concep- 
tion, predominates. The action of fancy, however, is the op- 
posite of all this. 

The absence of imagination is obvious throughout the whole 
of Irving's writings. But to illustrate, in a single scene, how 
entirely humor in him is dependent on fancy, and not imagi- 
nation, we may take the account of the Wacht-meester of Bearn 
Island, when the herald who had been sent by Grovernor Kieft 
arrived at the rebellious fort of Yan Rensellaerstein, in the 
Knickerbocker annals. 

"In the fulness of time, the yacht arrived before Bearn Island, and Anthony 
the Trumpeter, mounting the poop, sounded a parley to the fortress. In a 
little while, the steeple-crowned hat of Nicholas Koorn, the wacht-meester, 
rose above the battlements, followed by his iron visage, and ultimately his 
whole person, armed, as before, to the very teeth ; while one by one a whole 
row of Helderbergers reared their round burly heads above the wall, and be- 
side each pumpkin-head peered the end of a rusty musket." 

This separation of the wacht-meester's person into a three- 
storied automaton, and this display of his mimic garrison, as in 
a mirror which leaves their vital consciousness unreflected, is 
extremely diverting, but it never could be the suggestion of any 
but an unimaginative mind. 

As a double example of the perfection of a description of 
natural scenery in itself and wholly apart from imagination, and 
the failure of an attempt to represent the same scene imagina- 
tively, may be cited the view around Tappan Zee as Ichabod 
Crane rode towards it in the afternoon, and from it at midnight. 
The former of the two pictures is as follows : 

"As he journeyed along the side of a range of hills which look out upon 
some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson, the sun gradually wheeled 
his broad disk down into the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay 
motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation 
waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber 
clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon 
was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and 



76 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [iETAT. 33, 

from that iuto the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on 
the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, 
giving greater depth to the dark-gray and purple of their rocky sides. A 
sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her 
sails hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky 
gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in tho 



An exqui.site, a faultless piece of cabinet painting I undoubt- 
edly drawn and colored upon the spot. It is a portraiture of 
the scene as it is — abstractly — without reference to any state of 
feeling in the observer, or any prevailing sentiment in the narra- 
tive. In the pendant to this, the endeavor has been to exhibit 
the same locality in immediate relation with a peculiar condition 
of mind in the hero of the tale. 

" It was the very witching time of night when Ichabod, heavy-hearted and 
crest-fallen, pursued his travel homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills 
which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in 
the afternoon. Tho hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan 
Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there tho 
tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead 
hush of midnight he could even hear the barking of the watch-dog from the 
opposite shore of the Hudson ; but it was so vague and faint as only to give 
an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, 
too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, 
far off, from some farm-house away among the hills — but it was like a dream- 
ing sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the 
melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog, 
from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and turning sud- 
denly in his bed." 

Not thus would these objects have appeared to one who was 
in such a sensitive and excited condition of mind as presently to 
mistake an acquaintance with a cloak over his head and a pump- 
kin on his saddle-bow, for the Headless Horseman of the Hollow 
carrying his cranium before him. The design of describing the 
nocturnal scene by sounds rather than by sights is a good one ; 
but each particular noise, instead of being represented in a 
manner to I'eact with augmenting terror upon the fear-stricken 
sense of the traveller, is described in such a way as wholly to 
explain it away as a source of alarm, and to deprive it of the 



iETAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. YT 

power of affrighting. The things are described not accorduig 
to the law of terror within the mind of him on whom they were to 
operate, but according to the law of their actual state, as coldly 
viewed by an unexcited observer. The mast, which should have 
appeared as a strange, gleaming thing, weird and spectral, 
raising indefinite apprehensions, becomes a familiar and calming 
sight by being referred to a sloop, " riding quietly at anchor 
under the land." The distant bay of the watch-dog is well 
managed; but the drowsy crowing of the cock, which might 
with great effect have been made to have mysterious relation to 
the return of wandering ghosts to their sepulchral tenements, is 
Ijrought back to quotidian unmeaningness by being made to 
proceed from a bird "accidentally awakened." The chii'p which, 
heard at midnight, should have been an unknown signal, is 
elaborately portrayed as the soothing voice of the domestic and 
companionable cricket ; and the awful bass from the marshes 
which, in lonely darkness, would have been an unlocal, bodiless 
horror, thrilling the nerves like a galvanic shock, is divested of 
all terror and of all dignity, by being the snort of a frog 
"sleeping uncomfortably, and turning suddenly, in his bed." 
Compare all this with one of Shakspeare's nights 1 Mr. 
Irving's failure in this case is to be ascribed to defect of imagi- 
nation, and consequent excess of inappropriate and discordant 
detail. 

Moreover, this constant following of the minutiae of a scene 
to turn them into picturesque effect — this constant subordination 
of reflective action to outward appearance — damps and en- 
feebles the intellectual power. The fine, strong, manly thought 
. — the vigorous moral reflection — the commanding tone of ra- 
tional sense — which form so potent and grand an element in the 
magic of Scott's creations, are not found in Irving. However, 
it is a fiilse system to criticise a literary work according to what 
it has not. So viewed, it is seen erroneously as the complement 
of some imagined whole, and has all its signs reversed. It is 
wiser as well as kindlier to consider a production of art under 
the view of what it is and has, and not of what it lacks. 

In ideal pictures of inanimate nature, and of animals, trees. 



78 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JF.iat. 33. 

and landscapes, Mr. Irving's microscopic fidelity in limning ac- 
complishes some remarkable effects. He does not bring a scene 
before you by giving the general expression of it, or the leading 
characteristics, under the form of a mental conception, here and 
there rendered definite and particular by certain touches of 
detail. He paints every object separately and exquisitely, fixing 
your attention upon each in succession, and making the whole a 
series of special studies. He is in description what Backhuysen 
is in painting. So prominent is the perspective, so absolute 
the verisimility, that you seem to have the thing itself, rather 
than a representation of it. As a specimen of consummate 
skill in this way, we may take the picture of the inn-yard on a 
wet Sunday, in the story of "The Stout Gentleman." 

" I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world, than 
a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw, that had 
been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stag- 
nant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck ; there were several half- 
drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, 
crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail, matted, 
as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back ; 
near the cart wa? a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently 
to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide ; a wall- 
eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head 
out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy 
cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then, 
between a bark and a yelp ; a drab of a kitchen-wench tramped backwards 
and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather 
itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of 
hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making 
a riotous noise over their liquor." 

Certainly this is nature itself, — only more so, as Hudson 
would say. That " more so," is just the difficulty. 

The description in another part of " Bracebridge Hall," of 
Lady Lillicraft's dogs, is hardly inferior. 

" One is a fat spaniel, called Zephyr — though Heaven defend me from such 
a Zephyr! He is fed out of all shape and comfort; his eyes are nearly 
strained out of his head; he wheezes with corpulency, and cannot walk with- 
out great difBculty. The other is a little, old, gray-muzzled curmudgeon, 
with an unhappy eye, that kindles like a coal if you only look at bim ; bis 



^TAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. 79 

nose turns up; his mouth is drawn into wrinkles, so as to show his teeth ; in 
short, he has altogether the look of a dog far gone in misanthropy, and totally 
sick of the world. When he walks, he has his tail curled up so tight, that it 
seems to lift his feet from the ground; and he seldom makes use of more than 
three legs at a time, keeping the other drawn up in reserve. This last wretch 
is called Beauty." 

In the same line of excellence may be placed the picture 
of the landscape, in the chapter of the Angler in The Sketch 
Book." 

" I have them at this moment before my eyes, stealing along the border of 
the brook, where it lay open to the day, or was merely fringed by shrubs and 
bushes. I see the bittern rising with hollow scream, as they break in upon 
his rai-ely invaded haunt; the kingfisher, watching them suspiciously from 
his dry tree, that overhangs the deep, black mill-pond, in the gorge of the 
hills ; the tortoise, letting himself slip sideways from off the stone or log, on 
which he is sunning himself; and the panic-struck frog, plunging in bead- 
long, as they approach, and spreading an alarm throughout the watery world 
around." 

These are remarkable illustrations of the completeness and 
vividness with which an object or a scene can, by mere imita- 
tive description, be realized under your eye. This faculty we 
take to be Mr. Irving's forte ; and its successful exercise by 
him has given rise to a school of writers, who, with less taste, 
but in some cases more power, have carried the style to an un- 
limited height of popularity, but quite beyond the domain of 
genuine art. We regard Mr. Irving's works as "having furnished 
the original and model of Dickens's descriptive manner ; and, 
if the former has more delicacy, softness, and grace, the other 
excels in force, range, and vividness. Has not the generiil por- 
traiture of the species " English Stage-coachman," in " Tho 
Sketch Book," served as a preliminary study for the elder Wellcr 
in Pickwick ? 

"He has commonly," says Irving, "a broad, full face, curiously mottled 
with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel 
of the skin ; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt 
liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in 
which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He 
wears u broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief 
about his neck, knowingly knotted, and tucked in at the bosom ; and has, in 
summer-time, a large bouquet of flowers in his button-hole," Ac, &c. 



80 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [Mtat. 33. 

There can be no doubt of Mr. Irving's supremacy in this 
class or school. The only question is as to the comparative 
dignity and elevation of the school itself. For ourselves, we 
may as well say at once that we do not regard it as belonging 
to a high order of art. It implies an extremely nice observa- 
tion, constantly and painfully engaged upon its task ; but it 
involves no act of true, creation, no exercise of veritable poetic 
power. The pictures have no atmosphere ; the objects glare 
directly upon you without passing through any mental medium. 
Amused, astonished, and perhaps delighted with the work, you 
feel little respect or interest for the author. His character is 
not in his production. This is the style of all recent art. It is 
the school of Backhuysen, Achenbach, and Birkel. We make 
our protest against the whole cabal. We design, at a conve- 
nient opportunity, to deliver a full confession of our critical 
faith upon these topics. We deem an exposure of the pervading 
feebleness and falsity of the principle of this style, indispensable 
to rescue the youthful genius of our countiy from a fatal seduc- 
tion. The vice of the art of this day, literary and pictorial, 
poetical and prose, and infecting authors and readers alike, con- 
sists in the excess of fancy, and the deficiency of imagination. 

In respect to personal portraiture, Mr. Irving is an exquisite 
delineator of external manners, but has no power of representing 
character. He \3aints, not to the mind, by those intellectual 
touches which flash a complete subject into existence ; nor to the 
conceptive faculty, by seizing those leading traits which draw all 
the accessories and dependents after them ; but to the eye, by 
the transcription of every individual peculiarity in succession, 
each of which adds a modifying influence to those that went be- 
fore, so that the effect is not complete until each stroke has been 
noted. He never gives you the interior, living, conscious man. 
You never get hold of the moral being of the creature. You 
have the mere larva of the person ; the filmy shell of dress, 
carriage, and deportment, according to their pictorial impres- 
sion. There is a complete absence of materiality from his 
people. They make no noise in walking. When they cross 
the mead, the grass is not pressed down under their feet. They 



^TAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. 81 

seem, like Cliinese figures in a landscape, to hang a foot or two 
up in the air. They are shadows ; visionary toys in human 
shape ; moving their limbs according as the author of their 
being draws the strings upon which they are hung ; airy forms, 
flitting in an airy scene. 

How different is the nature of Scott's creations ! He seizes 
the moral and mental being of the subject of his pencil, and sets 
him before you as a real, breathing, earnest man. He brings 
out the exterior impression as strikingly and particularly as 
Irving ; but he approaches it fi'om within, and compasses it by 
associating outward indications with inward and characteristic 
qualities. Compare the picture of Touchwood with that of 
General Harbottle ! How clear and marked are the face, figure, 
and bodily peculiarities of the former ; yet how living he is ! 
How you feel his breath as he passes by ; how uncomfortably 
his eye lies upon you ! The elaboration of General Harbottle's 
exterior is infinitely greater; and, as a piece of outward pic- 
turing, nothing can be more complete : — "A soldier of the old 
school, with powdered head, sidelocks, and pig-tail : — his face 
shaped like the stern of a Dutch man-of-war, narrow at top, and 
wide at bottom, with full rosy cheeks, and a double chin ;'' — 
then, the meeting between himself and Lady Lillicraft : " The 
graciousness of her profound courtesy, and the air of the old 
school with which the General took oif his hat, swayed it gently 
in his hand, and bowed his powdered head :" — and again, where 
he and Master Simon were playing the mischief with a buxom 
milk-maid in a meadow, their elbowing each other now and then, 
and the General's shaking his shoulders, blowing up his cheeks, 
and breaking out into short fits of irrepressible laughter, — how 
perfect the portraiture ! Yet, with all, the General is not a 
living creature ; he is a mere airy puppet, a shadowy coinage 
of the vision, existing for the reader's mind only, in those scenes 
and acts in which he is specially described, and nowhere else. 

Humor, as an adopted tone of style, or a permanent habit 
of mind, is a striking characteristic of Mr. Irving's writings : it 
seems, however, to be not an original, inherent, spiritual capa- 
city, but an effect resulting from the odd, grotesque action of 



82 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33. 

the fancy and taste. It will be found, almost invariably, that 
the humorous character of his productions, is external and visi- 
ble, arising from queerness of outward form, or combination, or 
allusion ; it is humor to the sight, and not to the soul. Quaint, 
droll, comic, — what you will, in the line of diverting, laughter- 
moving conceit, — we can scarcely admit his possession of that 
grand, deep, pathetic, meditative inspiration, Humor ; — a faculty 
which seems to be the combination and the key of all our nature's 
sympathies ; which measures the highest flights of thought_, 
searches the deepest recesses of feeling, and sits upon the firmest 
seat of sense : the wisest instinct of our minds, the kindliest im- 
pulse of our hearts ; a prompting always right, a guidance ever 
graceful ; dignifying and endearing what it touches, and having 
relation to love rather than contempt. It would be neither fair 
nor practicable to compare the mirthfulness of Irving, with that 
of the great Cervantic mind, or T\ath that which was the fullest, 
strongest, most complex action of the mighty genius of Scott ; 
any more than to liken the simple carolings of a shepherd's 
reed to the multitudinous, interlinked, and infinitely complicated 
harmonies of one of Handel's oratorios. But taking lower and 
smaller parallels, the humor of Addison is intellectual, that of 
Goldsmith moral, and that of Irving purely fanciful. In the 
author of " The Spectator," the humorous seems to be the highest 
action of the rational ; the last, and finest, and surest test of 
sense and argument of right. In Goldsmith, it grows out of a 
practical and feeling acquaintance with life, and a keen and 
shrewd, yet affectionate insight into the peculiarities and weak- 
nesses of individual character, and the foibles, vanities, and 
innocent absurdities of domestic and social relations. In Irving, 
it is the humor of the picturesque and quaint. It is a ridiculing 
humor, founded on distortion and misrepresentation; not a 
genial, enjoying spirit, arising from seeing into the depths of 
things. In plain truth, Irving is nothing more nor less than 
the most delicate, graceful, and exquisite of caricaturists. 

As an illustration, that humor with Mr. Irving lies in the 
exercise of fancy, that it exists in the outward and pictorial, and 
not mentally, and in ideas, we may refer to the opening chapters 



^TAT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. 83 

of Knickerbocker's History. We are told, in a late prologue, 
that they were intended to burlesque the pedantic lore displayed 
in certain American works ; and the task is long and laboriously 
followed out. Yet how dull, vapid, and ineffective is the toil ! 
The whole thing is a failure. It is not until we come to the 
second book, and the portraits of Hendrick Hudson and his 
mate Jewit, and the Good Vrouw, that we feel one genuine 
emotion of merriment, and recognize the cunning of a master. 

A sense of the humorous, morally or intellectually, is a sure 
preservative against extravagance or bad taste ; and the extent 
to which Mr. Irving's drollery is merely a work of the fancy, 
and of kin to caricature, may be seen in the numerous instances, 
especially in his earlier writings, in which bizarre conceptions 
degenerate into mere witless farce, exciting no amusement what- 
ever. Such, we suppose, to be the account of the escape of 
Communipaw from the "Virginia fleet, by the burghers falling to 
work and smoking their pipes at such a rate, as wholly to con- 
ceal the country, and the account of the origin of the name of 
Anthony's Nose in the Highlands. The latter story is, that as 
Anthony, the Governor's trumpeter, whose nose was of a very 
burly size, was sailing up the Hudson, he leaned over the 
quarter-railing of the galley, early one morning, to contemplate 
it in the glassy wave below. 

"Just at this moment, the illustrious sun, breaking in all his splendor from 
behind a high bluff of the Highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams 
full upon the refulgent nose of the sounder of brass, the reflection of •which 
shot straightway down, hissing hot, into the water, and killed a mighty 
sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel," <fec., &c. 

If this is humor, we must confess our incapacity to perceive 
it. According to our impression, the greater part of Knicker- 
bocker's History consists of the farcical rather than the humor- 
ous; we pronounce it infinitely droll, but we do not laugh. 

In dealing with the pathetic, it is equally obvious, that Mr. 
Irving's power is not that of reflection, but of operating by 
visible images. In " The Sketch Book," under the title of Ru- 
ral Funerals, there are some meditations upon the influence of 



84 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JBtat. 33. 

death upon tne affections, which have become rather famous in 
Elegant Extracts. They are commonplace, overstrained, af- 
fected. But turn to the story of " The Widow and her Son," and 
you will find that the selection of incidents, to bring out all the 
tender pathos of the tale, manifests a surpassing and resistless 
art. The first view which we have of the mother, in church : 

"A poor, decrepit old woman, bending under the Tveiglit of years and 
infirmities : the lingerings of decent pride were visible in her appearance. 
Her dress, though humble in the extreme, was scrupulously clean. Some 
trivial respect, too, had been awarded her, for she did not take her seat among 
the village poor, but sat alone on the steps of the altar." 

Then the burial, when the mother had been assisted to kneel 
down at the head of the coffin at the grave : 

" Her withered hands were clasped, as if in prayer, but I could perceive, by 
a feeble rocking of the body, and a convulsive motion of the lips, that she 
was gazing on the last relics of her son with the yearnings of a mother's 
heart." 

Then her first appearance in the village on the following 
Sunday : 

" She had made an effort to put on something like mourning for her son . 
and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection 
and utter poverty; a black ribbon or so, a faded black handkerchief, and one 
or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief 
which passes show." 

These are the matchless strokes of genius, and show us that, 
however Mr. Irving may disappoint, when he deals with abstract 
reflections and thoughts, he never wanders when he follows the 
guidance of a visionary eye, inerrant in its truth, and unrivalable 
in its simple power. 

The qualities which we recognize in Mr. Irving, of a mild 
yet lively fancy, and a refined taste, render him peculiarly well 
adapted to excel in narrative ; and there he certainly assumes a 
position of especial and distinctive superiority. Walpole has 
remarked that simple narrative, in English, is one of the rarest 
and most difficult enterprises of literary art; and if the reason 
which he gives for it be not sound, at least the fact is verified 



JBtat. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. §5 

by all experience. Gibbon was master of every form of style 
except this ; Robertson, when he shone the most was farthest 
from it ; Hume alone approached tolerably near to the standard, 
yet even in his pages we find ourselves following the progress 
of a philosopher's views, rather than a history of national 
events. Bancroft cannot narrate at all, and Prescott narrates 
with labor and fatigue. But Irving is always simple, direct, 
onward, informing, yet elegant, lively, and agreeable. The 
pleasantness which he diffuses over subjects the most barren or 
the most uncomfortable, arises chiefly from the instinctive quiet- 
ness with which he seizes everything that is capable of being 
turned to picturesque effect, and employs it to shed light and 
grace upon the scene. The art of this system consists in the 
gentleness and fineness of the frequent rays which are thus shed 
abroad, and in the absence of strong, startling, and extraordi- 
nary lights. Instead of an occasional blaze diffused from 
prominent points, each incident, object, and interest is made 
mildly luminous by the lustre of a fancy almost imperceptible 
in its separate operation. It is by such a process that we are 
made to follow a troupe of adventurers across the disgusting 
sterilities of the north-western territories with the same delighted 
spirit with which we should tread the flowery vales of Cashmere, 
radiant with odors and ringing with the voices of birds. The 
unexhausted vigor, the delicate moderation, the consummate 
judgment with which in "Astoria" the resources of fiction are 
exerted to beautify the truth without distorting it, and to im- 
prove its tone without disturbing its form, are entitled to all 
admiration and all imitation. In some instances, in which he 
has allowed his pencil to leave its more brilliant touches upon 
the canvas, he has reached, in that work, the finest pictures that 
ever came from his genius. Such may be considered the narra- 
tive of the visit of Mackenzie and his companions to the village 
of Wish-ram, to demand the rifle of which an earlier traveller 
had been despoiled, and which was known to be retained as a 
trophy. There are no flourishes of fiction in the detail : the 
truth of the story is severely maintained, but the glow and 
splendor of poetry are given by merely supplying from general 



86 LITERAKY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33, 

conceptions some touclies of pictorial power which undoubtedly 
existed in the original occurrence. 



"Mackenzie oflFerecl to cross the river and demand tlie rifle, if any one 
would accompany him. It was a hair-brained project, for these villages were 
noted for the ruffian character of their inhabitants; yet two volunteers 
promptly stepped forward, Alfred Seton, the clerk, and Joe de la Pierre, the 
cook. The trio soon reached the opposite side of the river. On landing, they 
freshly primed their rifles and pistols. A path winding for about a hundred 
yards among rocks and crags, led to the village. No notice seemed to bo 
taken of their approach. Not a solitary being, man, woman, or child, greeted 
them. The very dogs, those noisy pests of an Indian town, kept silence. On 
entering the village a boy made his appearance, and pointed to a house of 
larger dimensions than the rest. They had to stoop to enter it; as soon as 
they had passed the threshold, the narrow passage behind them was filled by 
a sudden rush of Indians, who had before kept out of sight. 

"Mackenzie and his companions found themselves in a rude chamber of 
about twenty-five feet long, and twenty wide. A bright fire was blazing at 
one end, near which sat the chief, about sixty years old. A large number of 
Indians, wrapped in buffalo robes, were squatted in rows, three deep, forming 
a semi-circle round three sides of the room. A single glance sufficed to show 
them the grim and dangerous assembly into which they had intruded, and that 
all retreat was cut off by the mass which blocked up the entrance. 

" The chief pointed to the vacant side of the room opposite to the door, and 
motioned for them to take their seats. They complied. A dead pause ensued. 
The grim loarriors around sat like statues; each muffled in his robe, toith his 
fierce eyes bent on the intruders. The latter felt they were in a perilous pre- 
dicament. 

" ' Keep your eyes on the chief while I am addressing him,' said Mackenzie 
to his companions. ' Should he give any sign to his band, shoot him, and 
make for the door.' 

" Mackenzie advanced, and ofi'ered the pipe of peace to the chief, but it was 
refused. He then made a regular speech, explaining the object of their visit, 
apd proposing to give in exchange for the rifle two blankets, an axe, some 
beads and tobacco. 

"When he had done, the chief rose, began to address him in a low voice, 
but soon became loud and violent, and ended by working himself up into a 
furious passion. He upbraided the white men for their sordid conduct in pass- 
ing and repassing through their neighborhood without giving them a blanket 
or any other article of goods, merely because they had no furs to barter in 
exchange ; and he alluded, with menaces of vengeance, to the death of the 
Indians killed by the whites at the skirmish at the Falls. 

" Matters were verging to a crisis. It was evident the surrounding savages 
were only waiting a signal from the chief to spring upon their prey. Mackenzie 
and his companions had gradually risen on their feet during the speech, and 



MtkT. 33.] WASHINGTON IRVING. 8T 

had brought their rifles to a horizontal position, the barrels resting in their 
left hands; the muzzle cf Mackenzie's piece was within three feet of the 
speaker's heart. They cocked their rifles ; the click of the locks for a moment 
suffused the dark cheek of the savage, and there was a pause. They coolly but 
promptly advanced to the door; the Indians fell back in awe, and suffered 
tiiem to pass. The sun was just setting as they emerged from this dangerous 
den. They took the precaution to keep along the tops of the rocks as much as 
possible, on their way back to the canoe, and reached their camp in safety, 
congratulating themselves on their escape, and feeling no desire to make a 
second visit to the grim warriors of the Wish-ram." 

"The Life and Voyages of Columbus" however, constitute the 
most felicitous of the more dignified efforts of Mr. Irving's pen. 
It is impossible that the story of the sublime old tar can ever 
be told in a manner more thoroughly delightful. It is a "tale 
to hold children from play, and old men from the chimney 
coraer." You move upon enchanted ground, and every sight 
and every sound is framed for charming. But this praise implies 
some grave defects. The determination to make everything 
picturesque and entertaining is fatal to the truth of the subject. 
Delays, disgusts, hardships, oppressions, treacheries, and all the 
harsh, stern elements of the reality, instead of being exhibited 
in those rough, strong colors which would have kindled a manly 
sympathy in the reader's heart to make their rudeness welcome, 
are enamelled in a style of sketchy delicacy of outline and hue, 
that wholly betrays the genuine qualities of the subject. The 
rage for catching the picturesque in external effect frequently 
causes an utterly false notion of the moral aspect of the occasion 
to be rendered : the eye is fascinated and misled by the visible, 
material conception of what, intellectually, may be of a directly 
opposite nature. Thus the picture of Columbus's long and 
weary suit at the court of Spain, instead of being fully brought 
out in its uncomfortable and degrading reality, which might 
annoy the sensibilities of the reader, is touched up with images 
of romantic scenery which convert the dulness of the period 
into brilliant and poetic interest. These years were passed, it 
would seem, amid scenes of peril and adventure, following up 
the court in striking situations of wild, rugged, and mountainous 
war ; attending the sovereigns at sieges of Moorish cities, and 



88 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33. 

fighting himself iu the dashing forays that gave a zest to the 
war; until at length "Columbus beheld Muley Boabdil, the 
elder of the two rival kings of Granada, surrender in person all 
his remaining possessions and his right to the crown to the 
Spanish sovereigns." It is indeed a very curious study to a 
literary artist, to observe with what diligent dexterity the 
historian has mixed up the figure of Columbus with the persons, 
scenes, occurrences of the day, with whom we associate senti- 
ments of romantic interest ; how the gloom of unsuccessful con- 
ferences is relieved by the gorgeous costumies of cardinals, and 
bishops, and noble dames ; how the splendid trappings of royalty 
flit before the dazzled sight; until, at last, the period of this 
long attendance fills our thoughts as the most entertaining por- 
tion of Columbus's life. To the imagination and feelings of the 
reader the whole thing is an enchanting falsehood. It is really 
the feebleness and not the force of art which, unable to manage 
the strong contrasts that should have brought out the noble 
harmony of the sublime story, levels all iu one insipid melody. 
Moreover, the dreamy. Arcadian style of the narrative causes a 
complete want of those definite, sharp particularities which, 
in a history, are indispensable ; and which, after all, give an 
interest and an effect which all the flakes of sentiment and fancy, 
however accumulated, cannot supply. For example, in attempt- 
ing to impress us with a notion of the frailty and slightness of 
the vessels in which Columbus embarked upon his awful mission 
of exploration, he describes two of them as " light barks not 
superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days;" open 
and without decks^ &c. ; but he nowhere mentions their tonnage. 
If he had told us that one of the vessels was of only fifteen tons, 
which is the fact, we should have had a far more vivid concep- 
tion of the daring of this enterprise. But Mr. Irving is too 
nice a gentleman to deal in vulgar statistics. The consequence 
of this style of dainty selection and exquisite indistinctness is 
that we cannot determine whether we are reading a professed 
fiction or an intended history. The pictures lack that indi- 
viduality and force which tell us that we are looking at a 
portrait and not at a fancy-piece. While we read we are held 



.Etat. 23.] AVA,SI1INGT0N IRVING. 89 

as bj a wondering spell, but when we close the volume, the 
'^ incredulus odi" succeeds, and we long for a real history of 
the times, so that we may know how much of the fairy tale we 
have read is true. In the history of the siege of Granada this 
puzzle between truth and fiction becomes absolutely offending. 
We feel as if the chronicler was trifling with us. The essence 
of romance is poured out in such profusion as to become sicken- 
ing. In attempting to throw a perfume on the flowers of natu- 
ral truth he seems to have spilt the bottle of attar, and the 
nosegay is fairly fetid with artificial and excessive odor. 

The work upon which Mr. Irving's fame as a literary creator 
and artist will rest in future times is, no doubt, " The Sketch 
Book." The variety of its materials, the refinement mingled 
always with natural and familiar ease, the adaptation of its to- 
pics and tone to the general sympathy, the union of Italian bril- 
liance with Flemish fidelity in the sketches, render it justly a 
favorite with all. Walpole used to say, that an author's genius 
usually comes into flower at some period of his life. And probably 
there will be little difference of opinion upon the point that "The 
Sketch Book" is the perfect flower of all of Irving's faculties. 
"Braceb ridge Hall" falls entirely below it. The design of that 
work cannot be regarded as a happy one ; and objectionable as 
at best it is, the execution of the scheme is such as to develop 
new faults. In the first place, the plan or groundwork of the 
thing is misconceived ; and the misconception springs from that 
want of imagination which we have spoken of. The purpose 
of the work is to sketch the ancient poetic manners of the 
English people, especially in their country life ; and with a view 
to add the interest of a present scene to the beauty of old 
romance, the author supposes a character devotedly attached to 
all bygone customs, and passing his life in an endeavor to realize 
the life of the past in all the usages upon his own estate. Now, 
in order that such moral anachronism as Mr. Irving conceives, 
should be at all probable or possible, the first requisite is that 
the person from whom it originates should be represented as a 
man of ardent poetic genius, identifying himself by force of 
creative energy with the spirit of long departed institutions, 



»»0 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 33. 

and able, by the enthusiasm and force of his character, to infect 
all around him with the same illusion. Such is not Mr. Irving's 
Squire ; and it is against all consistency, that the commonplace, 
feeble, vacant creature whom he introduces to us as the pro- 
prietor of the Hall, should develop from his own temper, 
against all surrounding influences, the beautiful elaboration of 
ideal existence which is exhibited to our view, and that his de- 
]jendents, stewards, woodmen, and farmers, should breathe the 
atmosphere of his mind instead of their own actual and real 
consciousness. The primary and indispensable conditions of 
the scene are violated. We feel, therefore, in reading this work, 
a sense of falsity and difficulty. A vigorous imagination would 
have kept the author from this failure. But the literary defects 
of Bracebridge Hall are also striking. To refine the critical 
perceptions and sentiments by diligent familiarity with older 
models, and to reproduce the spirit of Addisonian grace, might 
be a worthy ambition ; but to subordinate the mind and charac- 
ter to the local and temporary form of a particular passage, — 
to labor to observe, think, and speak precisely upon the 
example of the Spectators — to make not a rational imitation, 
but a mechanical mimicry — is not a very lofty or a very wise 
employment of genius. As far even as this design is inten- 
tionally carried out, it is not successfully done. While the 
endeavor to imitate Addison is palpable and displeasing, the 
constant intervention of phrases and even particular words, 
which are wholly modern and American, exposes the falsity of 
the counterfeit, and even gives an air of vulgarity to that which, 
properly used, might have had the dignity of genuineness. It 
will be observed that the attempt to impart an Addisonian air 
to the style, consists chiefly in the frequent use of certain ex- 
pressions which are the accidental peculiarities of the model : 
— "I could not help observing" — "I am apt to find or to think" 
— " A very tolerable scholar," &c. But in the midst of these 
the constant recurrence of such words as " I noticed," and half 
a dozen others, which are neither Addisonian nor English, not 
only breaks the illusion, but converts it into an imposture. A 
greater difficulty, however, is that the imitation is not kept up, 



^TAT. 31.] THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA. 91 

and in the nature of the case, could not be kept up. For, the 
moment that the author becomes warmed, and his mind gets 
into vigorous play, such is the sympathy between thought and 
style, that as the former grows earnest the latter becomes charac- 
teristic and genuine. This transition from the falsetto of an 
affected Addisonianism to the natural tones of individual truth, 
causes the tales,(?) fine and musical as they are, to displease by 
inappropriateuess. Take, for instance, in the early chapters of 
"Bracebridge Hall," the paragraphs about family servants, and 
about the duties of women after they are married, where the 
author gives vent to his own serious and sober feelings and 
opinions upon interesting subjects. They are beautifully written, 
but have not a touch of the false antiquity of the rest ; and this 
partial change of the key throws everything into discord. It 
is like a man who, acting a part under a false-face, thrusts out 
his own features from the mask whenever he has anything par- 
ticularly clever to say. 

Of Mr. Irving's works, generally, it may be observed, that in 
a grammatical point of view, the style is delicate rather than 
pure, and more exquisite than correct. His use of words is not 
exact ; indeed, we constantly meet with expressions which it 
surprises us that a man of good education should, even in the 
greatest carelessness, let fall. Such phrases as the following : 
"the creaking of the cords seemed to agonize her,^^ in "The 
Widow and her Son ;" "he emerged his head out of his shell," 
in " Bracebridge Hall ;" " whom he thought fully entitled of 
being classed," &c., in the same place ; are among several that 
struck us upon our recent perusal of one or two volumes. 



The Female Poets op America. By Rufus Wilmot Guiswold. 

The elevation and purity of the moral tone of a nation may 
be pretty exactly estimated from the social position and influ- 
ence enjoyed by women. The female character, in truth, 
embodies and represents a special portion of the qualities of 



92 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 31. 

humanity; and that portion the most exalted and the least 
earthly. The deference paid to the sex and the control exer- 
cised by them, depend upon the extent to which those qualities 
have sway in the breasts of men. As natural energy and intel- 
lectual discernment are the masculine elements of the race, so 
those self-annihilating emotions and aflfections — that exquisite- 
ness of virtuous sensibility — that secondary and transcendental 
consciousness — which form the spiritual in our constitution — 
are the dowry which Providence gave with woman, when her 
loftier destiny was blended into eternal unity with our kind. In 
the civilization of modern Europe, it would be diflBcult to de- 
termine whether an increased reverence for woman was a result 
of the new religion, or a means providentially appointed for 
securing its reception ; so identified in their progress have been 
these two sentiments. From the early days of Christianity, the 
mother and her child became the symbol of that faith and feel- 
ing which were to humanize the world ; and from that central 
idea, as from a germ of diviner life, the whole system of catholic 
virtues flowered. When, at a later period, the forces of intel- 
lectual vigor, eager to expand into a brighter existence, gushed 
forth into imaginative art, the maternal relation and the domestic 
circle became the type of that mystic power which, rising from 
the ruins of Judea, had pervaded the earth with its transforming 
energy. The Madonna — that natural apotheosis of woman. — is 
the permanent emblem of Christianity. 

The American system, as it whirls onward in its mighty and 
amazing progress, is manifesting several new qualities of life 
and power, which give promise that the social condition ulti- 
mately to be realized in this country, will differ strikingly from 
any that has been exhibited in former times. Xot the least 
observable of these are the change and advancement which have 
been worked out in the position of that sex which, whether for 
good or for evil, has always wrought such memorable effects 
upon the world. The prominence and influence of women in 
their relation to society have passed into a more expanded 
phase of dignity, and operate in original methods and through 
uovel channels. "Les Races se feminisent,''^ says Buffon. 



^TAT. 31.] THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA. 93 

This peculiarity of our age, indeed, to whicli we iiave alluded, 
is by no means confined to our own country. The circumstance 
of literary development most characteristic of the present time 
everywhere, is the superior distinction, relatively, which women 
have acquired in some of the most brilliant departments of 
authorship. In fiction, they seem, in every country in Europe, 
as well as on this side of the water, to have vindicated their 
claims to an equality with the other sex, and perhaps, indeed, 
to have supplanted them in popular favor. Xo northern writer 
has ever acquired a reputation so pervading and universal as 
Miss Bremer. In France, Madame Dudevant, better known as 
George Sand, has obtained, by her analysis of character, her 
mastery of the passions, and the splendid vigor of her imagina- 
tion, a position of commanding superiority. In England, we 
have the names of Miss Ellen Pickering, Miss Howitt, Mrs. 
Gore, and many others : and the English muse finds among her 
male votaries, no utterance in tones so rich, and bold, and 
genuine, as those which answer to the touches of Mrs. Norton, 
and Miss Barrett. So in the generation just closed, Mrs. 
Hemans, and Mrs. Baillie, and Miss Landon, held a place 
scarcely subordinate to that of the great masters who then 
swept the lyi'e with a power and freedom which had not been 
known for two centuries. The causes of this honorable pecu- 
liarity of our own days, like most other changes in society, 
would probably be found to lie among influences which are so 
subtle as to elude inquiry. It is obvious, however, that there 
has been, through two centuries, a progressive advance in the 
relation which the female sex has held to the intellectual con- 
dicton of the race, and in their influence upon the public mind. 
Along with this, we think it equally clear, that there has been 
a gradual expansion in the literary character and calling, favor- 
able to the display of natural and unschooled talent. Formerly, 
authorship was looked upon as a distinct profession, as much 
so, almost, as the law ; it was regarded as eminently a learned 
profession, and as specially demanding a thorough familiarity 
with a certain course of classical discipline. Hence the great 
traditionary wonder of Shakspeare's want of education. If a 



94 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 31. 

Shakspeare were to appear now, whatever wonder his genius 
might raise, the circumstance that lie had " little Latin and less 
Greek" would not generally be considered as among the causes 
of surprise. In the modern world, literature has followed a 
course of development directly opposite to that which we see 
among the ancients : with them, it began from spontaneous in- 
spiration, and, as it went on, became encumbered with artifice 
and technicalities. In modern Europe, it started from profound 
learning, and has gradually worked its way to liberty and nature. 
It is now "the free thought of the free soul." No author is 
now struck down by the critics at his entrance upon the field, 
because he has not a scholastic badge upon him ; on the con- 
trary, we court and commend, as conducing to originality, a 
complete ignorance of the classics, and of the earlier writers of 
our own tongue. Now, as from the nature of the case, how- 
ever superior in other respects, women can rarely be as pro- 
foundly and systematically educated as the other sex, we look 
upon the ponderous and pedantic style of composition in 
former days, as one of the causes of the suppression of female 
genius, and the change which we have alluded to, as havhig 
prominently led to the noble sortie, which it has made of late. 
With all these European illustrations, however, the action 
of the gentle sex abroad, has been, as a usual thing, domestic, 
moral, invisible : among us, it has grown to be general, intel- 
lectual and obvious ; this contributes largely to the force and di- 
rection of public opinion : its weight is felt in the action of the 
country : by a direct and palpable control, it affects the tone 
of the national mind and feeling. Alterations in the laws of a 
people are a sure sign of some antecedent modification in the 
circumstances of society, which they accommodate and register; 
and the legislation which, beginning at the East, has extended 
throughout most of the States of this Union, recognizing the 
increased independence and power of the wife, and giving pro- 
tection to her interests, is one of the evidences of the social 
change which we allude to. Common-law principles have been 
broken up, because the conditions upon which those principles 
formed themselves have undergone variation. The extent to 



^TAT. 31.] THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA. 95 

which women share the toils and the honors of literary pro- 
duction among us, is altogether unexampled in the records of 
any of the European states to which, with a full exhibition 
of them, we have alluded. Look at any department in America 
that you please, — except, of course, such as concern some 
special profession or craft, with which women necessarily are 
not conversant — and you will find that the proportion of works 
bearing feminine names upon their titles, is larger than in any 
other land, and in many instances exceeds that of their mascu- 
line rivals. In fiction — from its most substantial to its slightest 
shapes — in criticism, in politics — in the useful and in the elegant 
alike — those to whom it was once a rare and almost forbidden 
accomplishment even to read, now equal or excel that sex which 
formerly boasted that the pen was as exclusively its possession 
as the sword. The extent to which graceful forms mingle in 
the masquerade of the daily press, and the amount of power that 
thus emanates upon society from the purest sources, would 
scarcely be believed by any who are not initiated in the mysteries 
of that secret fraternity. 

The workings of all this upon the character and condition 
of our people, cannot, we must say in passing, but be admirable. 
In the present day, the literary class forms the great moral estate 
of a nation. The press is the grand medium through which the 
rays of mental and political and spiritual illumination and 
guidance stream forth upon the world. That so large a portion 
of the best and purest light which our nature has garnered up 
from the primal beam which shone upon it in the morning of 
creation, mingles in that pillar of fire which conducts us through 
the night of doubt, and trial, and danger, is the truest augury 
of the grandeur and elevation of our destiny. American litera- 
ture, at this moment, possesses more genuineness, chasteness, 
simplicity and virtue than the literature of any European country 
which displays the same vitality and force. The presence of 
womanhood, pervading its life like a religion, has reproved and 
cleansed its spirit. The same power has acted like a solvent 
upon public taste ; precipitating into neglect and disfavor all 
coarse and gross productions, and leaving only the correct and 



96 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 31. 

good afloat. No authors among us, but such as have pursued 
upright and honest aims, and have promoted the interests of 
morality and refinement, have acquired a permanent reputation 
and popularity ; and distant may the day be in which this shall 
be otherwise. The minds of our countrymen have been swayed 
towards many benignant reformations in society — schemes pro- 
motive of peace, and justice, and charity, and opposed to selfish- 
ness and violence, have been brought to bear upon the opinions 
and action of the people ; and in all these things we may trace 
the operation of female sympathies, acting usually through the 
channels of the press. It must be observed, also, that literary 
habits on the part of women here, are not liable to the evils 
which sometimes attend them in Europe. In France and Eng- 
land, female authorship, being much rarer than with us, and 
being a good deal in opposition to the prejudices and tastes of 
the community, must be accompanied by a boldness of temper 
and a defiance of the public opinion, which reacts very injuri- 
ously upon the character of those who become subject to such 
an influence. But with us, the pen is so frequent and approved 
an ornament of hands which wear it as gracefully as they wear 
a bracelet or a ring, that the practice of composition does not 
form, to our common feelings, the faintest departure from the 
gentleness and delicacy of female reserve. We hail, therefore, 
the new work, "The Female Poets of America," with admiration, 
and thanks, and pride. No idea is a more favorite one with 
this country and with us, than that it is among the future 
glories of our destiny to give to the admiration of men a litera- 
ture grander, richer, more magnificent in tone and spirit, than 
all that have yet preceded it. An omen is here before us ! 
Poetry is, in its nature, prophetic. It is the emanation and 
witness of that imaginative sensibility, that anticipating appre- 
hension, of the finer and subtler kind of souls, in whose reflective 
feeling, that wdiich is not yet, is mirrored with a brilliancy and 
distinctness more vivid than the present and the real. It is the 
full-flowering, in a more delicate and vital atmosphere, of that 
plant of national genius which in the actual scene around, as 
yet exists only in the germ. It is the forward-thrown echo — 



^TAT. 31.] THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA. g-j 

airy and musical, yet truthful and definite — of that action which 
is about to be evolved by the system of which it is the symbol 
and the signal. Now, as the most marked peculiarity of our 
new condition of society has been stated to be the relative 
position and eminence and influence of women among us, it is 
an evidence of the genuineness of the creative talent which has 
been manifested on these shores that it is so predominantly 
feminine. Freshly and freely have the sources of this inspira- 
tion been opened upon our domestic state ; and appropriately 
are the fairest primitice of the poetic faculty, on this soil, ofTered 
from gentle hands. No literary annals of Europe can show an 
instance of the powers of the muse, so widely diffused, so vari- 
ously toned, so highly cultivated, in the softer sex, as is here 
displayed. 

Dr. Grriswold has performed the duties of his undertaking 
with a diligence, a taste and a discrimination which we doubt 
whether any man in .this country could have equalled. The 
selections are copious and judicious, and the criticisms upon 
them are delicate and just. A great deal of trouble has ob- 
viously been taken to obtain materials for .the work, and to 
bring together accurate information in regard to the authors. 
A very large portion of the poems — and those among the best 
in the book — ^have never been printed before, having been given 
to the editor expressly for this collection. The work has there- 
fore, to a great extent, the value of an original production by 
the combined efforts of our female poets. We purpose a series 
of papers on the female poets of America,* and shall have occa- 
sion therein to return and linger upon the labors of this enthu- 
siast of the literary fame of his country. He has largely increased 
the field of survey, and brought into view, as entitled to perma- 
nent places in our Pantheon, persons who before were but names 
without embodiment. His judgments are fearless and inde- 

» These paper?, to which the present criticism was meant as introductory 
merely, were subsequently written, and are spoken of by a most competent 
judge as having been among the few of Mr. Wallace's perfectly finished 
papers, and such as he was willing to have printed. Unfortunately, however, 
they are not found among his M8^^. — En. 





98 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 31. 

pendent, and his experience and good sense have always saved 
his freedom from being perverted into paradox or rashness. 
He seems to loolv, (is we do, to the Occident for the birth-place 
of those rays that gleam "unborrowed from the sun." We are 
much struck with his remarks upon those youthful prodigies, 
Alice and Phoebe Carey : — 

" In the west," says Dr. Griswold, " song gushes and flows, like the springs 
and rivers, more imperially than elsewhere, as they will believe who study 
her journals, or who read these effusions or those of Amelia Welby, the author 
of ' The Wife of Leon/ and other young poets, whose minds seem to be elevated 
by the glorious nature there, into tho atmosphere where all thought takes a 
shape of beauty and harmony. A delicious play of fancy distinguishes much 
of the finest poetry of the sex; but Alice Carey evinces in many poems a 
genuine imagination and a creative energy that challenge peculiar praise. We 
have perhaps no other author so young, in whom the poetical faculty is so 
largely developed. Her sister writes with vigor, and a hopeful and genial 
spirit, and there are many felicities of expression, particularly in her later 
pieces. She refers more than Alice to the common experience, and has per- 
haps a deeper sympathy with that philosophy and those movements of the 
day, which look for a nearer approach to equality in culture, fortune, and 
social relations." 

Of the delightful Grace Greenwood, another child of the 
forest, the editor writes thus pleasantly and happily : — 

" It was from the beautiful village of New Brighton, on the Beaver river, 
thirty miles below Pittsburg, in a quiet valley, surrounded by the most bold and 
picturesque scenery, that in 1844 she wrote the first of those sprightly and 
brilliant letters under the signature of ' Grace Greenwood,' by which she was 
introduced to the literary world. They were addressed to General Morris and 
Mr. Willis, then editors of Tho New Mirror, and being published in that mis- 
cellany, the question of their authorship was discussed in the journals and in 
literary circles; they were attributed in turns to the most piquant and elegant 
of our known writers ; and curiosity was in no degree lessened by intimations 
that they were by some Diana of the West, who, like the ancient goddess, in- 
spired the men who saw her, with madness, and in her chosen groves and by 
her streams used her whip and rein with the boldness and grace of Mercury. 
Such secrets are not easily kept, and while the fair magazinist was visiting 
the Atlantic cities, in 1846, the veil was thrown aside, and she became known 
by her proper name. She has since been among the most industrious and suc- 
cessful of our authors, and has written with perhaps equal facility and felicity 
in every style, ' from grave to gay, from lively to severe.' Her apprehensions 
are sudden and powerful. The lessons of art and the secrets of experience 
have no mists for her quick eyes. Many-sided as Proteus, she yet by an in- 



^TAT. 19.] LORD BOLINGBROKE. 99 

domitable will benJs all her strong and passionate nature to the subject that 
is present, plucks from it whatever it has of mystery, and weaves it into the 
forms of her imagination, or casts it aside as the dross of a fruitless analysis. 
Educated in a simple condition of life, where conventionalism had no authority 
against truth and reason, and the healthful activity of her mind preserved by 
an admirable physical training and development, — all her thought is direct 
and honest, and her sentiment vigorous and cheerful. But the energy of her 
character and intelligence is not opposed to true delicacy. A feeble under- 
standing and a nature without the elements of quick .and permanent decision, 
on the contrary, cannot take in the noblest forms of real or ideal beauty. It 
is the sham delicacy that is shocked at things actual and necessary, that fills 
the magazines with rhymed commonplaces, that sacrifices to a prudish nicety, 
all individualism, and is the chief bar to esthetic cultivation and development. 
She looks with a poet's eye upon nature, and with a poet's soul dares and 
aspires for the beautiful, as it is understood by all the great intelligences 
whose wisdom takes the form of genius." 



Letters ON the Study and Use of History; With Reflections upon 
Exile. By the late Right Honorable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount 
Bolingbroke.® 

I AM amazed at the neglect into which the writings of this great 
philosopher have fallen. If there be a life in wisdom, or a soul in 
wit, or in sentences of magic beauty a force that makes itself to 
be remembered, his fame should never have passed away from 
the earth. There w^as that both in his character and in his 
genius which addressed posterity, rather than the present, and 
yet his distinction died before him. It is indeed lamentable to 
see to how mean an influence of prejudice his renown has been 
succumbed. His reputation, like his person, has been devoured 
by worms. I yield the profoundest homage to his greatness. 
Of all the lords of mind, none hath a larger state or loftier pace 
thajQ he. The whole frame of his intellectual exhibition is 
marked by a grandness of conception, a majesty of mind, that is 
as rare as it is delightful ; the natural high utterances of one 
that bi'eathes a superior atmosphere of thought to that of ordi- 
nary men. He is the only infidel derider of man, from w^hose 

* The criticism on Lord Bolingbroke. which follows, is extracted from tho 
author's early diary. — Ed. 



100 LITEllARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 19. 

writings you come exalted, ennobled, and with added vigor in 
the cause of virtue. The most generous believer might read 
Boliugbroke, and in the spirit of his sentiments find nothing 
alien to the high hopings of the Christian heart. He looked on 
man with the scowl of a demon, and on truth with the smile of 
a seraph. His intellect was brilliant, though disordered ; 
splendid, though erring ; bright, but blasted. The gorgeous 
structure of his philosophy is riven to the foundation ; but genius 
always commands our sympathy, for, " like the temples of the 
gods, she is venerable even in ruins." I never read Boliugbroke 
without a feeling of deep melancholy ; so sincere and elevated 
are his aspirations, so vain and errabund his theories. He often 
seems to feel the hollowness of the portion which he had chosen, 
but there abides within him a native nobility of soul, an inherent 
dignity of character, which forbids the vanity of regret or the 
weakness of a groan. We find in him none of those fretful and 
deep repinings, whereby Byron hourly showed that the load 
which he had assumed was too heavy for him, and daily crushed 
him to the earth ; nor, on the other hand, do we see either 
the wild revelry of the feebler children of perdition, or that rigid 
calmness beneath which the arch-apostate veiled from his peers 
the burning anguish of his soul ; but rather the sad cheerfulness 
and vain hopefulness of one that did not feel that all the fault 
was his. Towards the regions of moral truth he often turns a 
sightless eye ; but the placid countenance tells that the blindness 
was not wilful. He reminds me of a benighted fisherman, who, 
to join his family on shore, makes his way cheerily over the ice 
with pole and push, and dexterous leap ; not seeing that the 
field which he is crossing is detached from the land, and is drift- 
ing away to the solitudes of the midnight sea. Though he 
shivers by the flickering bonfire of deism, he utters no complaint ; 
though he wanders through the sands of barren and irremediable 
error, he never quits the philosophic dignity of the flowing robe 
and burnished ring. His step along the paths of infidelity is 
like the tread of Vathek down the stairs of the hall of Eblis ; 
for though the road is to utter and eternal perdition, the feet of 
a born king of men are upon it. We might liken him to a ba- 



^TAT. 19.] LORD BOLINGBROKE. 101 

nishcd noble among the frosts of Siberia ; noble, though ba- 
nished, — though destitute, still dignified : conscious that there 
still remained to him an " order," from which none could degrade 
him, and that a star still shone upon his breast, which no mon- 
arch could strike off. 

In pronouncing sentence upon the moral course of a man like 
St. John, we must take into account those splendid infirmities 
of nature which ensure for genius the fame of a conqueror, and 
the Me of a victim ; that irrepressible ardor of spirit, which, 
while it kindles the intellect into a flashing fire, clouds the judg- 
ment with the fumes of excitement, and disturbs the reason with 
its wild impatience. His is a breast which passion has vexed 
with all its storms. The chords of sensibility have been swept 
from the highest to the lowest note by blasts of sufleriug. Yet, 
throughout all his nature there are traits of high nobility ; there 
is visible in him none of the languor of a mind washed with de- 
bauchery, or drenched in the " sickly dews" of selfishness ; " le 
vice l\entrainait sans Vasservir.'" Much still "sounds man" 
about him. For the waywardness of his temper and the -mad- 
ness of his conduct, some excuse may be found in the history of 
his life. Soon after his entrance into public scenes, he found a 
rival, whose character he detested, and whose talents he de- 
spised, safely fixed in circumstances to laugh at him, and by 
force of dull and regular exertion pinning him to the stake of 
exile and contempt. He found factions using him when they 
needed his assistance, and turning from him in the day of his 
c-alamity. With energies that demanded action, and a heart 
Avhich domestic interests could not satisfy, he was doomed to 
feel in the flush of early manhood, that his day had gone by for- 
ever. When I look upon him struggling under the deadly load 
of genius, and taking his steps, perforce unsteady, over the burn- 
ing marie of statesmanship, at a time when politics swayed the 
hearts of men with the firmness of a principle, and the fervor of 
a passion, I confess that I cannot discover his failings ; and 
before I have finished his majestic apologies for his errors, I 
have already forgotten what they were. 

It has been his misfortune that there are few persons who 



102 LITEKAKY CHITICISMS. [^r.vT. 19. 

have been capable of representing him justly ; for those who 
admired his politics were siu-e to abhor his philosophy. The 
eunuch-mind of the younger Walpole could as little taste the 
strong and rasping sense of the moralist, as his filial tenderness 
conld tolerate the contemptuous energy of the politician. This 
variety of quality which made his character inconsistent, entered 
likewise into his genius, and made it copious. He partook of 
the best essence, and was tinged with the distinct peculiarities of 
many of those distinguished persons by whom he was compan- 
ioned and courted. He had much of the sagacity of Swift, all 
of the moral purpose, mild fancy, and uutrembling judgment of 
Pope, the severe taste of Atterbury, and the rich scholarship of 
Arbuthnot. I think that his power of sarcasm was by nature both 
stronger and more delicate than that of his poetical friend ; but 
the latter had so educated his miud in bitterness, that he had 
become, like Lot's wife, a pillar of salt. His sneer is often 
savage, but it is never the sneer of jealousy or hate ; it seems to 
proceed from conscientious contempt. He unites the full com- 
pass of English sense with the pointed vigor of the wits of 
France. His style has a corresponding breadth and liberality, 
and lies between the high cathedral style of Milton and the 
sauntering grace of Addison. He exhibits a fresh and ever- 
springing life of mind. Every sentence rays distinct and vivid 
thought. He tears down systems with the naked hand of mas- 
culine sense ; and like a moral Milo, rends the aged trunks of 
philosophic theories with the arm of unschooled force. His 
sentences are not rich nor highly wrought : it is their tone, 
rather than their structure which gives them their weight. In 
every member you see the force and shaping of a serious mind. 
His stately tread is the accustomed princely step of one who has 
ever moved on marble, reposed on velvet, and breathed the air 
of palaces. The grave procession which rests in the spectator's 
mind as a passing dream of splendor, is the daily condition of 
his life. There is nothing dreamy or scholastic about Boling- 
broke : he is always fresh with the hourly interests of life. He 
examines theories of metaphysics with the closeness and serious- 
ness of one discussing measures in council. He states his system 



^TAT. 19.] AUTlIOItSIIIP OF THE DOCTOR. 103 

with the air of a man ready to furnish an estimate, or to em- 
body hi.s sentiments in resolutions ; and without dreaming of com- 
paring the magnificent moral force of the patriot with the merely 
intellectual vigor of the partisan, I must say, that as a stylist, 
as a communicator of thoughts, I prefer tlie well-laced sobriety 
of Bolingbroke to the Persian prodigality of Burke. Boling- 
broke shapes his thoughts into ornament ; Burke weaves deco- 
rations around his. Beauty, vdih one, is the form of the con- 
ception ; with the other, it is the garniture of the apparel. Bo- 
lingbroke's entertainments are like the European banquets on 
silver plate, where what is showy, is also useful ; Burke reminds 
us of that Asiatic prince who breakfasted his friends on stacks 
of roses. 



The DocTon, etc. In two vols. 12mo. (Two volumes iu one.) Harper and 
Brothers. Second Edition. 

[The twenty years which have passed since that strange literary work, " The 
Doctor," appeared, leaves but an imperfect recollection with this generation, 
of the interest which the question of its authorship excited. It was imputed 
by most persons to Hartley Coleridge, by many to Charles Lamb, and by others 
to different persons; some attributing it to one, and some to another. It was, 
in most respects, so unlike any thing which Mr. Southey had ever written, 
either in poetry or prose, that few would have been disposed to give it to him 
under any circumstances. And as he himself was known to deny the author- 
ship, the question, so far as he was concerned, appeared to be settled. From 
the time that Mr. "Wallace read the first twenty pages of the book, he pro- 
nounced with confidence that Southey was the auJior; and after finishing the 
first two volumes — the only ones which had then appeared — expressed the 
grounds of his opinion in the anonymous criticism which follows. A competent 
judge — Dr. Shelton Mackenzie — has said of it, that "with the sole exception of 
Mr. Adolphus's Letters to Richard Heber on the authorship of the Waverley 
Xovels, it is the ablest, clearest, and most complete thing of the kind ever pub- 
lished." Southey himself, who had heard of it, was almost as curious to know 
the author of the Essay as the public had been to know the author of " The 
Doctor." But he still denied that " The Doctor" was his. " That such a book 
should be ascribed to me," he said on hearing of the Essay, and before he saw 
it, " I look upon as the greatest compliment that could be paid to any living 
author, but I shall not take credit for it, as Person did for ' The Devil's Thoughts.' 
The argument proves only what is apparent from other circumstances ; that 
the writer wishes it (for the present) to pass for mine, and that he is a skilful 



104 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JEtat. 19. 

imitator. It is evident tbat he is very well acquainted with my writings ; and 
I have reason to think that directly or indirectly he knows something of my 
table talk. There are, indeed, some parts which I should without hesitation 
filiate upon some of my friends, if it were not for a persuasion that they would 
not have kept the secret from me." Mr. Southey, it is known, never at any 
time acknowledged the book as his. 

Had the third and fourth volumes appeared at the time this criticism was 
written, the proofs of the Laureate's authorship would have been greatly accu- 
mulated. As it is, they will probably be thought conclusive. — Ed.] 

The reimpression of the two first volumes of this work in 
England, the publication of a third volume, and the announce- 
ment of a fourth, together with the fact that one American 
edition has been exhausted, and that another has been demanded, 
indicate pretty decisively such a degree of interest in the work 
among the reading community of both countries, as to warrant 
an inquiry in regard to its source. 

Excepting the letters of Junius, we do not remember any 
publication, in modern times, which has commanded, in any con- 
siderable degree, the popular attention, concerning which there 
has long been much doubt as to the author. Matthias, to 
the last hour of his life, denied any participation in the " Pur- 
suits of Literature," but we imagine that there are few who 
entertain any doubts upon that subject. The claims of Scott to 
the title of "Author of Waverley," derived, in the popular estima- 
tion, very little additional force from his own formal acknow- 
ledgment at the Theatrical Fund Dinner. No one had the least 
hesitation about the matter before. Mr. Adolphus's admirable 
" Letters to Richard Heber" established, from coincidences in 
thought, expression, and feeling, between the poems and the 
novels, that the writer of both was, beyond all question, the same. 
Bentley says, in respect to some phrase in one of Cicero's ora- 
tions, "^^o uero Ciceronevi ita scrijisisse Cicej^oni ijysi affi.r- 
manii non crediderein ;'''' and we apprehend that most of those 
who read those letters, would have been inclined to say, in a 
similar spirit, " If Scott were to say that Scott did not write 
'Waverley,' I would not believe Scott himself." 

Upon the same principle, we are abundantly satisfied, after a 
cursory comparison of "The Doctor" with the published writings 



^TAT. 19.] AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. 105 

of Robert i::50utliey, that to that "most book-ful of Laureates" is 
to be ascribed the paternity of the singular production. As 
many literary journals here and in England have expressed 
doubts in relation to this matter, we proceed to state some of 
the facts upon which we ground our present opinion. 

We are surprised that the name of Hartley Coleridge should 
have been mentioned among those of the possible authors. A 
slight acquaintance with his " Biographia Borealis" would have 
shown to any one such discordances of thinking between him 
and the author of " The Doctor" as to settle his pretensions at 
once. Hartley is an ardent whig, an admirer of the modern 
systems of education and politics, and a panegyrist of Brougham ; 
while the other is a strenuous tory, a man thoroughly wi-apt in 
the old forms of feeling, and at the opposite pole of sentiment, as 
to politics and the instruction of the people, from the ex-Lord 
Chancellor. Would Hartley Coleridge have written these pas- 
sages, sneering at a father for whom it is evident, from his 
volumes of poems, that he bears such tender and profound af- 
fection ? "A metaphysician, or as some of my contemporaries 
would affect to say, a psychologist." {Doctor, i., T6.) "Is it 
Coleridge ? The method indeed of the book might lead to such 
a suspicion — but then it is intelligible throughout.'- {Doctor, 
ii., 86.) Would a 6ac7ie?o?- have penned this sentence? "A 
bachelor, a single man, an imperfect individual, half only of the 
whole being which, by the laws of nature and of Christian po- 
lity, it was intended that man should become V {Doctor, ii., 6L) 
Or, on the other hand, would the author of " The Doctor" — a 
churchman, and a conservative, indeed, in whom there is no 
flinching — have expressed such opinions as are contained in these 
passages by Hartley Coleridge ? "We cannot but think that a 
yearly thanksgiving for the invention of printing might be very 
advantageously substituted for certain courtly services in the lit- 
urgy, which were always base and blasphemous, and are now 
utterly unmeaning." {Biog. Borealis, 13L) " Greek was an 
innovation, and liable to the same plausible and prudential ob- 
jections which apply to innovations in general." {Ibid., 344.) 
Or would this unknown — In'imfal and overflowing as he is with 



106 LITEKARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 19. 

knowledge of the old English writers — have had occasion to add 
in a note, after quoting a short sentence from Fuller : " Such at 
least is Fuller's meaning and illustration. I am afraid I have 
not quoted his words exactly, for, to tell the truth, I know not 
in which of his works to look for them. But I recollect reading 
the sentiment in ' Lamb's selections ?' " (Biog. Borealis, 322.) 
We apprehend that he who wrote " The Doctor," is not in 
the habit of being indebted to Lamb's nor to any one else's 
" selections" for his acquaintance with the old worthies. Is not 
this sentence more in keeping with the character of " multo- 
scribbling" Southey, than with that of an author who has pub- 
lished only two very narrowly-circulated works ? "I have 
oftentimes had the happiness of seeing due commendations be- 
stowed by gentle critics, unknown admirers, and partial friends 
upon my pen, which has been married to all amiable epithets ; 
classical, fine, powerful, tender, touching, pathetic, strong, fanci- 
ful, daring, elegant, sublime, beautiful." {Doctor, i., 39.) The 
following passage has no propriety as coming from Hartley 
Coleridge, whose excursions upon Pegassus have been in a very 
regular way, while it exactly and most felicitously describes the 
poetry of Southey, which is chiefly upon the wildest subjects 
and in the wildest measures. " Tell me not of Pegassus ! I 
have ridden him many a time ; * * high and low, far and wide, 
round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know 
all his earth paces and his sky paces. I have tried him at a 
walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand gallop, at 
a full gallop, and at full speed. I have proved him in the ma- 
nege with single turns and the manege with double turns, his 
bounds, his curvets, his pirouettes, and his pistes, and his crou- 
pade, and his balstade, his gallop galliard, and his capriole." 
(Doctor, i., 25-6.) The writer of this book is manifestly a much 
older man, and a much more practiced writer, than Southey's 
nephew, and accustomed to deliver his opinions with far greater 
authority than can attach to the sentiments of one so little known. 
Mr. Southey has always been distinguished for an affected 
use of certain uncommon words, some obsolete, some new-coined ; 
and there is scarcely one of these verbal peculiarities which does 



^TAT. 19.] AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. lOY 

not occur very frequently in " The Doctor." Such are, the verb 
" worsen" (Soidhey^s "Essays,^' i., 85 ; ii., 23 ; ii., 231 ; " Col- 
loquies,'' l, 46; i., 59; i., 236; ii., 273; Doctor, ii., 142, 
186) ; the adjective "worser," the noun " dispatsey," (Colloquies, 
I, 18 ; Doctor, ii., 118,) and many others of a similar stamp. 

Southey, in his notes to the poem of "Roderick," (and else- 
where when he uses the word,) always writes "Mussulmen" as 
the plural of "Mussulman," instead of the correct and general 
expression, "Mussulmans ;" and we remember that when "Ro- 
derick" appeared, this deviation was animadverted upon by the 
reviewers in "The Christian Observer." As Southey, however, 
has continued the custom, we presume that he does it on con- 
viction of its propriety. Now the author of " The Doctor" 
adopts the same unusual fashion : " The English might have been 
'Mussulmen.' " (Doctor, i., 198.) "Remarks which are not in- 
tended for Mussulmen." (Doctor, i., 92. Contents of the Inter- 
chapter.) Throughout the work we find continued traces of Mr. 
Southey's personal feelings ; in the high praise of the unpopular , 
AV alter Landor, and the despised Sir Egerton Brydges, both 
being the Laureate's particular friends, and the latter having 
scarcely ever been quoted by anybody else : in the sneers 
against Lord Byron, Mr. Jeffrey, and others who have given 
him occasion of offence, and whom, like the "portentous cub" 
of old, he has always pursued with scorn ; for the warmest ad- 
mirers of Mr. Southey must allow that, if he never forgets a 
friend, he never forgives an enemy. In the parliament of 1817, 
there sat a certain Mr. AVilliam Smith, who insulted Southey, 
by calling upon the attorney-general to prosecute him for pub- 
lishing "Wat Tyler," and whose worthless carcass Southey 
hewed in pieces in a most terrific " Letter." Who is there now, 
in all England, except the author of this letter, who would have 
retained recollection enough and feeling enough about this Mr. 
Smith, to have made him the object of the sneer which we find 
in the second volume of " The Doctor ?" And, what is remark- 
able, we find the same topic of reproach urged against him in 
Southey's " Letter" and in this book — the reproach of having the 



108 



LITERARY CRITICISMS. 



[^TAT. U 



" Is it Smith? vvliicli of the Smiths? 
* •*• There is Sidney, who is Joke 
Smith to the Eiliuburgh Review, and 
William, who is Motion Smith to the 
dissenters, orthodox and hettTodox, in 
parliament, having been elected to 
represent them — to wit, the afcrosaid 
dissenters — by the citizens of Nor- 
wich." — The boctor, ii., 87. 



" The poem may possibly have been 
honored with a place in Mr. William 
Smith's library, as it received the appro- 
bation of all the dissenting journals of 
the day. It is possible that their re- 
commendation may have induced him 
to favor 'Joan of Arc' with a perusal." 
— Southcy's Letter to Smith. 



In the same chapter, where the author is speculating about 
the persons to whom his work will be attributed, we find this 
singular sentence about Porson : " And Professor Porson, if he 
were not gone where his Greek is of no use to him, would ac- 
cept credit for it, though he would not claim it." {Doctor, ii., 
85.) To explain this, it must be remembered that Southey, in 
conjunction with the late Mr. Coleridge, wrote a poem called 
" The Devil's Walk," which, while it was anonymous, Porson re- 
cited so frequently and mysteriously, that during his whole life 
he was supposed to be the author of it, and he never denied the 
honor : "he accepted credit for it, though he would not claim it." 

Southey, in the early part of his career, went to London to 
study law, and, like most persons who do not study it profoundly, 
imbibed a most hearty hatred both for its theory and practice — 
a hatred which is constantly appearing in his writings, and 
which equally belongs to the author of "The Doctor." 



" But no suggestions could ever 
have induced Daniel to choose for 
him the profession of the law. The 
very name of lawyer was to him a 
word of evil acceptation. He knew 
that laws were necessary evils ; but he 
thought they were much greater evils 
than there was any necessity that they 
should be : and believing this to be oc- 
casioned by those who were engaged 
in the trade of administering them, he 
looked upon lawyers as the greatest 
pests iu the country." — The Doctor, i., 
136. 

" The most upright lawyer acquires 
a sort of Swiss conscience for profes- 
sional use ; to resist a rightful claim 
with all the devices of legal subtlety, 
and all the technicalities of legal craft : 
I know not how he who considers this 



" Law-craft, if not a twin fiend with 
priest-craft, is an imp of the same 
stock ; and perhaps the worser devil 
of the two." — Colloqnics, i., 108. 

" He who may wish to show with 
what absurd perversion the forms and 
technicalities of law are applied to ob- 
struct the purposes of justice, which 
they were designed to further, may 
find excellent examples in England." 
— Colloquies, i., 8. 

"The worst grievance that exists — 
the enormous expenses, the chicanery, 
and the ruinous delays of the law." — 
Essai/s, ii., 29. 

" AVe venture to ask whether it be ab- 
solutely necessary that so many loop- 
holes should be left for the escape of 
guilt? Whether the purposes of just- 
ice are not sacrificed to the technicalities 



JEtxt. 19.] 



AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. 



109 



to be his dnty toward his client can 
reconcile it with his duty toward his 
neighbor." — ( The Doctor, ii., GO.) See 
the whole of page CO and page 61. 

"You employ lawyers to express 
your meaning in a deed of conveyance, 
a marriage settlement, or a will ; and 
they so smother it with words, so en- 
velop it with technicalities, so bury 
it beneath redundancies of speech, 
that any meaning which is sought for 
may be picked out, to the confusion 
of that which you intended. You ask 
for justice, and you receive a nice dis- 
tinction — a forced construction — a ver- 
bal criticism. By such means you are 
defeated and plundered in a civil cause; 
and in a criminal one, a slip of the 
pen in the indictment brings off the 
criminal scot free." — The Doctor, i., 
181. 



of law, which is sacrificing the end to 
the means ? and whether the weight 
which is allowed to flaws and inform- 
alities in the practice of our courts, 
and the importance which is attached 
to things so utterly insignificant in 
themselves, be a whit more honorable 
to the profession of the law, than the 
grossest quackery is to the science of 
medicine." — Essays, ii., 177. 



He goes on to give instances of criminals escaping by verbal 
error in the indictment. 

We subjoin other coincidences in opinion, and similarities in 
thought and expression : 



"The auxiliaries must, have, and 
been, which enabled Whitaker, of Man- 
chester, to write whole quartos of hy- 
pothetical history in the potential 
mood." — The Doctor, i., 28. 

" Whether the children went to seek 
school or not, it was his wish that they 
should be taught their prayers, the 
creed, and the commandments, at 
home. These he thought were better 
learned at the mother's knees than 
from any other teacher." — The Doctor, 
ii., 186. 

"The child should receive from her 
its first spiritual food, the milk of sound 
doctrine."— r/te Doctor, i., 186. 



"But he had a wise heart, and the 
wisdom of the heart is wortli all other 
wisdom." — The Doctor, i., 62. 



10 



"Whitaker, the h3'pothetical histo- 
rian of Manchester." — Vindicice Ec- 
clesice Anrjlicaucc, 225. 



"The rudiments of religion are best 
learned at our mother's knees." — Es- 
says, ii., 144. 

" The habits of religion which a boy 
learns at his mother's knees." — Collo- 
quies, 294. 



" Fed with the milk of sound doc- 
trine." — Essays, ii., 143. 

" They must be fed with the milk of 
sound doctrine." — Essays, ii., 225. 

"The richness of his mind, and the 
wisdom of his heart, for in the heart 
it is that true wisdom has its seat." — 
Vindicice, 6. 

" The wisdom of the heart is want- 
ing there." — Colloquies, ii., 264. 

"In the wisdom of the heart he was 
far beyond that age." — Colloquies, i., 
102. 



no 



LITEKARY CRITICISMS. 



[^TAT. 19, 



" A metaphysician * * if he were at 
all master of his art babblative." — The 
Doctor, i., 76. 

"The soporific sermons which 
closed the domestic religiosities of 
those melancholy days." — The Doctor, 
i., 09. 



"Professors of the arts babblative 
and scribblative." — Colloquies, ii., 48. 



"A feverish state of what may 
better be called religiosity thau re- 
ligion." — Colloquies, ii., 102. 



Both of our authors believe in ghosts, and there is some simi- 
hirity in their mode of defining their belief : 



"The belief in apparitions, which 
was all but universal a century ago, 
is still, and ever will be held by the 
great majority of mankind. Call it a 
prejudice if you will." 

" What is a universal prejudice, 
says Reginald Heber, but the voice of 
human nature?" — The Doctor, ii., ISO. 

" That the spirits of the departed are 
permitted to appear only for special 
purposes, is what the most credulous 
l)eliever in such appearances would 
probably admit, if he reasoned at all 
on the subject." — The Doctor, ibid. 



" You believe then in apparitions," 
said my visitor. 

" Even so, sir. That such things 
should be, is probable a priori; and 
I cannot refuse assent to the strong 
evidence that such things are, nor to 
the common consent which has pre- 
vailed among all people, every where, 
in all ages." — Colloquies, i., 11. 

"My serious belief amounts to this : 
that preternatural impressions are 
sometimes communicated for wise pur- 
poses ; and that departed spirits are 
sometimes permitted to manifest them- 
selves." — Colloquies, i., 11. 



In strongly advocating the culture of bogs and waste lands, 
Southey and the author of " The Doctor" agree : 



The cultivation of bogs " is the 
readiest way in which useful employ- 
ment can be provided for the indust- 
rious poor. And if the land so appro- 
priated should produce nothing more 
than is required for the support of 
those employed in cultivating it, and 
who must otherwise be partly or 
wholly supported by the poor-rates, 
such cultivation would even then be 
profitable to the public." — The Doctor, 
i., 163. 

"Is it fitting that this should be, 
while there are fifteen millions of cul- 
tivable acres lying waste ? Is it pos- 
sible to conceive grosser improvidence 
in a nation, grosser folly," etc. — The 
Doctor, i., 162. 



" Give them employment in public 
works; bring the bogs into cultiva- 
tion." — Essays, ii., 442. 

" It will not always be the reproach 
of this kingdom that large tracts of 
land are lying waste while thousands 
are wanting employment, and tens of 
thousands owe their chief means of 
support to the poor-rates." — Colloquies, 
ii., 274. 

" Surely it is allowable to hope that 
whole districts will not always be suf- 
fered to lie waste while multitudes are 
in want of employment and bread." — 
Essays, ii., 25. See also, ibid., i., 113; 
ii., 29. 



They accord, as well, in thinking that much may be done by 
individuals in relieving the grievance of the poor-laws : 



"Let parishes and corporations do | " It should be well understood how 
what is in their power for themselves. | largo a part of the evil arises from 



^TAT. 19.] 



AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. 



Ill 



And bestir yourselves in this good 
work, ye who can ! The supineness of 
the government is no excuse for you. 
It is in the exertions of individuals 
that all national reformation must be- 
gin.— TAe Doctor, i., 162. 



causes which are completely within 
the power of the local magistrates, and 
how much might be accomplished by 
the etforLs of benevolent individuals 
which cannot be reached by any le- 
gislative enactment." — Essays, ii., 116. 
Same sentiment in Essays, ii., 106. 

Here are other opinions wherein tlie two do " marvellously 
agree :" 



" They were plain people, who had 
neither manufactories to corrupt, ale- 
houses to brutalize, nor newspapers to 
miSead them." — the Doctor, ii., 182. 



"During the summer and part of 
the autumn, he followed the good old 
usage of catechizing the children after 
the second lesson in the evening ser- 
vice. Once a week during Lent he 
examined all the children on a week 
day : the lust exaraination was in 
Easter week, after which each was 
sent home happy with a homely cake, 
the gift of a wealthv parishoner," etc. 
—The Doctor, ii., 186-7. 



"The dispersion of families and the 
consequent disruption of natural ties." 
— The Doctor, ii., 197. 



" The multiplication of ale-houses is 
not less surely the effect and the cause 
of an increased and increasing de- 
pravity of manners." — Essays, ii., 117. 

"Tor the laboring man, the ale- 
house is now a place of pure un- 
mingled evil. — Essays, ii., 120. 

"Your manufactories have produced 
a moral pestilence unknown to all pre- 
ceding ages." — Colloquies, i., 50. 

On this point see Southey, jiassim. 

On the evil of newspapers. See Es- 
says, i., 120, and ii., 170. 

"Were the children catechized in 
the church at stated seasons, according 
to the good old custom, a few trifling 
rewards to the children themselves, 
and a few marks of encouragement to 
those parents who deserved it, would 
produce greater and better effects upon 
both," etc. — Essays, ii., lid-S. 

In his Essays, he supposes the case 
of a parish as it should be : 

"The children of the other inh.abi- 
tants would be examined in the ele- 
ments of religion on stated days in the 
church, and receive from the clergy- 
man, after the final examination, some 
little reward proportioned to their 
deserts; some remuneration of that 
kind %chich is acceptable to aZ/, being, 
however, distributed to all who had 
attended regularly, without distinction, 
as the means of rendering attendance, 
a thing desired by the children them- 
selves." — Essays, ii., 148. 

"The dispersion of families and 
breaking up of family ties." — Essays, 
ii., 114. 

" There is evil, great evil, in this 
disruption of natural ties," (by the 
separation of families.) — Colloquies, ii., 
259. 

" The disruption of natural ties." — 
Vindicioi, 293. 



112 



LITERARY CRITICISMS. 



[iETAT. 19. 



"Witb all this expenditure, cases 
are continually occurring of death by 
starvation, either of hunger or of cold, 
or both together; wretches are carried 
before the magistrates for the oflfenco 
of living in the streets, or in un- 
finished houses, when they had not 
where to hide their heads ; others have 
been found dead by the side of lime- 
kilns or brick-kilns, whither they had 
crept to save themselves from perishing 
with cold."— TAe Doctor, i., 162. 



" Trade itself had not then been cor 
rupted by that ruinous spirit of com- 
petition, which, more than any other of 
the evils now pressing upon us, de- 
serves to be called the curse of Eng- 
land in the present age." — The Doctor, 
ii., 195. 



"As if scorn had been the influenza 
of the female mind that morning." — 
The Doctor, i., 29. 

" Such preachers have never failed 
to appear during the prevalence of any 
religious influenza." — The Doctor, i., 
25. 



"The soul of Hans Engclbrecht not 
only went to hell, but brought back 
from it a stench which proved to all 
the bystanders that it had been there." 
—The Doctor, i., 25. 



"But let this quackery pass." — The 
Dovtor, i., 187. 

"And here Ilorrebow, the Natural 
Historian of Iceland— if Horrebow 
had been his biographer — would have 



"Hence these shocking instances of 
persons dropping down in the streets, 
or crawling to brick-kilns, and dying 
from inanition, cases which could not 
happen in a country where so many 
laws have been enacted, and such 
heavy imposts are raised for the re- 
lief of poverty, unless there were some- 
thing radically erroneous in the system 
of administering that relief, something 
that increases the evil that it was in- 
tended to remove." — Essays, ii., 170. 

"I say nothing of those who perish 
for want of sufiicient food and neces- 
sary comforts, the victims of slow suf- 
fering and obscure disease ; nor of 
those who having crept to some brick- 
kiln at night, in hope of preserving life 
by its warmth, are found there dead 
in the morning." — Colloquies, ii., 259. 

"So long as men in trade are actu- 
ated by selfishness, which is the spirit 
of trade, and as competition, which is 
the life of trade, continues unrestrained, 
so long will a manufacturing country 
be liable to the distress that arises 
from having overstocked its markets." 
—Essays, ii., 268. 

" In the competition of trade, one ill 
principle sometimes counteracts an- 
other, and yet both being ill, work for 
ill"— Colloquies, ii., 246-7. 

" The intellectual atmosphere had 
received its taint; and as an injhienza 
beginning in Tartary travels from 
China, throughout the whole inhabited 
part of the old continent, so was this 
moral pestilence to run its course." — 
Essays, ii., 7'!. 

" The moral influenza of method- 
ism." — Colloquies, ii., 20 t. 

"Did you ever, Sir, meet with the 
'divine visions of Hans Eugelbreoht ?' 
He not only went to the place of tor- 
ments, like Drithelm, and smelt the 
stiuk of the infernal pit, but brought 
some of the stink back with him, to 
convince his friends that he had been 
there." — Vindicice, 187. 

" But let this folly pass." — Vindicice, 
p. 48. 

" AVilh this I conclude a letter which 
may remind tiie reader of the chapter 
concerning owls in Ilorrebow's Na- 



JStat. 19.] 



AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. 



113 



ended this chapter." — The Doctor, {., 1 tural History of Iceland. " — Vindicice, 
22'J. I 57. 

Both of these gentlemen revenge themselves on the bulk of 
Rees's Encyclopcedia by docking it of the initial Un : 



"He would have filled more vol- 
umes than Rees's Cyclopedia." — The 
Doctor, ii., 116. 

"Which Lord Byron is as incapable 
of understanding, or even believing 
in another, as he is of feeling it in 
himself."— r/ie Doctor, ii., 81. 



"Would have filled more volumes 
than Dr. Rees's Cyclopoedia." — Viii- 
dieice, 101. 

"A feeling, of which Lord Byron 
had no conception, would have with- 
held me from animadverting in that 
manner upon his conduct." — Sonthey's 
second Litter concerning Lord Byron. 



Argument against Southey might be thought derivable from 
the sneering use of Wynn's name on page 146, vol. i. — Wynn 
being one of Sonthey's oldest and dearest friends — to whom 
both Madoc and the Vindicite are dedicated. But there is a 
passage in the Essays which not only affords precedent for this 
use of Wynn's name, but may be considered as the germ of the 
idea in " The Doctor." The coincidence is very striking. He is 
speaking of Catholic emancipation : 



Speaking of tte bells to be rung for 
the triumph of the Catholic cause : 
" And to commemorate the extraordi- 
nary union of sentiment which that 
cause has brought about between per- 
sons not otherwise remarkable for any 
similitude of feelings or opinions, they 
might unite two or more names in one 
bell, and thus, with a peculiar felicity 
of compliment, show who and who, 
upon this great and memorable occa- 
sion, ^«^/crf together. In such a case 
the names selected for a peal of eight 
tunable bells might run thus : 

"1. Canning O'Connel. 2. Plunket 
Shiel. 3. Agustus Frederick Cobbet. 
4. Williams Wynn. 5. BurdettWaith- 
man. 6. Greenville Wood. 7. 
Palmerston Hume. 8. Lawless 

Brougham." — The Doctor, i., 146. 

" The angelic Doctor, St. Thomas 
Aquinas, this greatest of the school- 
men." — 'The Doctor, ii. 115. 



" An eloc}«ent and wise and thought- " With the wise and the thoughtful.' 
ful author."— r/ie Doctor. —Colloquies, ii., 173. 

10* 



" How is the Marquis of Lansdowne 
to agree with his Irish tenants and 
with Captain Rock in this matter? 
Earl Gray with Joseph Hume ? Mr. 
Grant with Mr. Doyle ? Lord Plunket 
with Mr. O'Connel? Mr. Williams 
AVynnwith Cobbet and Jack Lawless?" 
— Essays, ii., 370. 



St. Thomas Aquinas, "a man whose 
extraordinary powers of mind few per- 
sons are competent to appreciate." — 
Vindicice, 329. 



114 



LITERARY CRITICISMS. 



[^TAT. 19. 



"Hopes scarcely less ilclightful than 
those which sceuicd to dawn upon 
mankind with the discovery of the 
gases, and with the commonccmeut 
of the French Revolution, and in these 
latter days with the progress of the 
Bible Society."— T/;e Doctor, i., 54. 

" Sunday schools, which make Sun- 
day a day of toil to teachers, and the 
most irksome day in the week to child- 
ren." — The Doctor, ii., 186. 

"Long before Sunday schools — 
whether for good or evil — were in- 
vented. Patrons and patronesses of 
Sunday schools, be not offended if a 
doubt concerning their utility be here 
implied ! The Doctor entertained such 
a doubt, and the why and the where- 
fore shall in due time be fairly stated." 
— The Doctor, ii., 55. 



"You surely do not expect that tho 
millennium is to be brought about by 
the triumph of what arc called liberal 
opinions, nor by Sunday schools, and 
Religious Tract Societies, nor by all 
the portentous bibliolatry of the age." 
— Colloquies, i., 35. 



Southey was a republican in liis youth, and is a tory in liis 
manhood, and thus has contrived to get abused by both parties : 
and it seems, strangely enough, that the unknown " Doctor" 
shared the same fate : 



" Your dealers in public and private 
scandal, whether Jacobins or Anti- 
Jacobins, the pimps and panders of a 
profligate press." — The Doctor, i., 41. 



" All the abuse and calumny with 
which, from one party or the other, 
Anti-Jacobins or Jacobins, I have 
been assailed." — Essai/a, ii., 30. 

"A spirit of Anti-Jacobinism was 
predominant, which was as unjust and 
as intolerant, though not quite as fe- 
rocious, as the Jacobinism of the pre- 
sent day." — Essays, ii., 10. 



The peace of Utrecht galls both of them : 



"Hartley, famous for his library, 
and infamous for the peace of 
Utrecht."— r/te Doctor, i., 55. 



"Did Lord Lauderdale know that 
children inevitably lacerate them- 
selves in learning this dreadful occu- 
pation ? that they are frequently crip- 
pled by it? frequently lose thoir lives 



" England never had so much in her 
power as during the conferences at 
Utrecht, and never did she appear in 
so degraded and disgraceful a cha- 
racter. * "*• The faction which then, 
for its own sinister purposes, betrayed 
the interests of Europe." — Essays, ii., 
66. 

" Hartley, who betrayed Europe at 
Utrecht."— i7('s<o;-^ of the Peninsular 
War, ii., 58. 

Chimney sweeping. " Children can- 
not be compelled to learn it, frightful 
and perilous as it is, without cruelty : it 
induces a peculiar and fatal disorder, 
so common as to be called the chimney 



JEtat. 19.] 



AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCTOR. 



115 



in it by suffocation, or by slow firo ? 
that it induces a peculiar and dread- 
ful disease, and that those who sur- 
vive, have at the age of seventeen or 
eighteen to seek their living how they 
can in some other employment, for it 
is only by children that this can be 
carried on." — The Doctor, i., 90. 



sweeper's disease ; and the boys who 
escape the disease, and are neither 
killed by filth nor hard usage, outgrow 
the employment when they shoot into 
manhood, and find themselves adrift 
upon the world, without any means 
of getting a livelihood." — Essays, i., 
225. 



Both have noticed what I do not remember to have seen ob- 
served elsewhere — that by English writers — Swift, Sidney, and 
others — " Stella" is erroneously employed for a female name. 



" Cleon serving for a name feminine 
in French, as Stella has done in 
English."— ne Doctor ii., 110. 



"The law would not allow him to 
marrj' his brother's widow ; a law, be 
it remarked in passing, which is not 
sanctioned by reason, and which, in- 
stead of being in conformity with 
scripture, is in direct opposition to it, 
being in fact the mere device of a cor- 
rupt and greedy church." — The Doctor, 
i., 37. 



"Is Sidney the first person who 
used ' Stella' as a female name ? He 
must have known it was a man's name 
among the Romans." — Southcy'a Let- 
ters to Brydrjes — Brydges' Autohiog., ii., 
282. 

"No extenuation can be ofibred for 
these prohibitions, which were not 
more unwarranted by the laws of God 
and man, than they were unreasonable 
in themselves, and vexatious in their 
operation." — Vindicice, 235. 

He says {ibid.) that the object of the 
Romish church in making these pro- 
hibitions was to increase its revenue 
by the prices of permission — which 
explains the word "greedy." 



We have thus placed in juxtaposition some passages, (and we 
might easily double their number,) which seem to us to afford de- 
cisive proof of proceeding from the same author. The peculiarity 
of the sentiments is as worthy of notice as their coincidence. On 
both sides a tory is seen condemning the peace of Utrecht, and 
arguing for law reform, two things which tories are not used to 
do : both seem to have suffered from Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin 
abuse — and where is the man, beside Southey, to whom that 
answers ? Both condemn manufactories, ale-houses, and news- 
papers : both strongly argue the cultivation of waste lands, and 
condemn competition in trade ; both, being religious men, oppose 
Sunday Schools and Bible Societies ; both advocate catechising : 
both argue that the poor-laws are so administered as to enhance 
the evil they were designed to check, and the imagination of 
both has been singularly ira]ircssed with the circumstance of 



116 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat, 19. 

poor persons dying in brick-kilns ; both are anxious to remove 
the evil of children sweeping chimneys ; both ridicule phrenology ; 
and by both authors is displayed an unlimited command and use 
of the stores of Italian, Spanish, and old English literature. 
The author of " The Doctor" quotes and praises Southey ; but not 
more frequently, nor otherwise, than Southey does himself. In 
short, there are innumerable points of agreement between them 
— not one of discrepancy ; and there are not two distinct authors, 
or two distinct men, living, of whom this can be said : either the 
" hands" or the " voice" would differ. 

We add one circumstance which we think admits of no re- 
butter, and fixes the authorship, beyond skepticism, upon Sou- 
they. The author of " The Doctor" says, (vol. ii., p. 80,) 
" Lord Brooke, who is called the most thoughtful of poets, by 
the most book-ful of Laureates." Where does Southey give 
Lord Brooke this title ? In a letter to Sir Egerton Brydges : 
" ' Lord Brooke,' who is the most thoughtful of all poets." (Aulo- 
hiography of Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. ii., 278.) 

A tolerable familiar acquaintance with Southey's writings 
fenables us to say, with entire confidence, that he applies this 
phrase to our English Lycophrou no where else. Now " The 
Doctor" was published early in January, 1834. — the Autobiog- 
raphy of Sir Egerton, which first gave the letter to the public, 
not till late in June, 1834 : so that here was the author of 
" The Doctor" quoting a composition of Southey^s a good half 
year before it was published. " If that be not proof, speak !" 
If our readers have not been able to penetrate the meaning 
of the words on the last page but one of " The Doctor," (vol. ii.,) 
p. 219., we have the satisfaction of giving them the clue. The 
words are composed of the first syllables of the names of the 
author's friends, and of the author himself : 

Isdis, - - Israel D 'Israeli. 

Roso, - - Robert Southey. 

Heta, - - Henry Taylor. 

Samro, - - Samuel Rogers. 

Theho, - - Theodore Hook. 

Heneco, - - Henry Nelson Coleridge. 



^TAT. 28.] VON RAUMER ON AMERICA. 117 

Tliojama, - - Thomas James Matthias 

Johofre, - - John Hookham Frere. 

Wala, - - Walter Lancloi'. 

Venarchly, - Yenerable Archdeacon Lyell. 

Yerevfrawra, - Very Rev. Francis Wraugham. 



America and the American People. By Frederick Von Raumer, Pro- 
fessor of History in the University of Berlin, &c. Translated from tho 
German. 

The Baron Yon Raumer is a very respectable man ; a most 
eminently respectable and exemplary person ; but he a little 
exceeds the license which respectability is allowed to possess, 
of being pedantic, formal, and commonplace. From what we 
saw of him personally, and from what we knew of his writings, 
we had expected that his book about Ameinca would be rather 
a heavy performance ; but we were not pi-epared for any such 
result as this. The Baron has gone beyond all his promises, 
and outdone the anticipations of his best friends. We had not 
supposed it possible for any man to possess himself of so rare 
an assemblage of disqualifications for agreeable writing, of such 
select talents for heaviness, such acquired capacities for com- 
monplace, such extraordinary powers of prosiness. We did 
not before believe that, in any one, such a variety of abilities 
could act together with such mutual adaptation and absolute 
unity of effect, for the production of one definite result, — that 
of what Burke would call pure, defecated, dephlegmated dul- 
ness. There is learning, observation, study, labor, in all the de- 
tails ; and only stolidity in the grand total. The work reminds 
us of nothing so much as some of those huge equations which 
one meets in the higher mathematics ; where, after a great deal 
of figuration with numbers and letters, and a great deal of plus 
and minus, and cubing and differentiating, the whole is summed 
up as equal to zero. There is depth and range enough, but the 
informing spirit of genius and vigor moves not upon the face 
of the waters. The book is a Run of Cutch, — myriads of par- 



118 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28, 

tides of fine and curious ores are borne along on a copious 
stream, to form at tlie end only an enormous mass of mud. It 
is surprising- to us that a man can touch upon so many subjects 
which have drawn out all the sense and passion of a nation for 
years together, and been illuminated with all that is brilliant 
in the intelligence of a vast continent, and yet contrive to say 
not only nothing that is new, (which might well be excused,) 
but nothing that is philosophical — nothing that, in any higher 
sense than mere literality, is true, nothing that is striking, no- 
thing that is valuable. The only original conception which we 
have met with in the volume, is the eulogy of President Tyler, 
in which, with a certain felicity of fearlessness, the writer selects 
the veto of the Bank bill, as the prominent topic of commenda- 
tion. The only original facts which we find, consist in some 
statistics of spitting : "With watch in hand," says the Professor, 
" I ascertained that, on an average, in the space of one minute, 
one man spit five times, and another, (a clergyman too,) eight." 
We express our admiration at this dignified and interesting 
spectacle of a Professor of History coming a thousand miles 
with a choice chronometer in hand to count the number of times 
that our native blackguards expectorate. Seriously, was not 
the Baron afraid, like Coriolanus, that 

" Boys with spits, and girls with stones, 
Would slay him in the puny battle ?" 

There is but one thing in which we are not satisfied with this 
report ; we should have been glad to have had a tabular state- 
ment of the number of separate spitments, clerical and lay, from 
which this average of eight to five in favor of the hierarchy was 
deduced, such as he has given of the length of time employed 
by all the students in Harvard College in going through their 
recitations. The Baron himself, it must be confessed, labors 
under no such infirmity as these subjects of his watch seem to 
have been afflicted with, an excess of humor. 

To give a correct account of this work, we should characterize 
it as that of a democratic German He Tocqueville ; without, 
however, any thing of democratic energy, any thing of German 



^TAT. 28.] VON RAUMER ON AMERICA. Hg 

originality, or any thing of De Tocqueville's brilliance. We 
are struck at once with what Coleridge called the encyclopedic 
tendency of the German mind, its desire to embrace a totality 
of view. Like our " ami Belier, il commence par le com- 
mencemoit." We find him, in the first paragraphs, among the 
remotest geological periods, describing the probable time of the 
upheaval of the American continent ; we are then carried 
through a course of geography ; and next through a series of 
mineralogical observations. We then have a judicious and 
rather neat abridgement of Grahame's History, running through 
half a dozen chapters ; then an account of the political and legal 
constitutions of the country, which is merely the first volume 
of Kent's Commentaries, with additions out of the American 
Almanac ; and then a series of discussions on Banks, Tariffs, 
Cities, Schools, and Religion, as vapid and worthless as last 
year's port entries, or weekly lists of stocks. This range of dis- 
cussion belongs, we suppose, to what the cant of the hour calls 
the German many-sidedness. We are content that a treatise 
should have as many sides as its author chooses to give it, but 
we insist, for the sake of its readers, that it should have a few 
points. We suspect that this many-sidedness is merely one of 
those delusions which prevail for a time because nobody under- 
stands their signification enough to expose their want of sense. 
It seems to us that formal and physical extension of the field of 
view is sometimes confounded with expansion of intellectual con- 
ception, and a widening of the natural horizon mistaken for an 
increase of mental light. For ourselves, we do not perceive 
what connection there is between geological upheavings a"nd 
social ones ; nor why an account of the explosive tendencies of 
radicalism should be ushered in with a preface on primeval vol- 
canoes. There is a long chapter on Slavery, which is as formal 
as an ancient sermon and as trashy as a modern song. There 
is another on currency and credit, in which the author shows 
that he has never comprehended the princijyle on which bank- 
ing is founded : he sneers at truths which are as settled and 
certain in the science of paper credit, as the laws of gravitation 
are in mechanics ; and utterly confuses historical order and ac- 



120 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

curacy in bis account of the alTair between General Jackson 
and the United States Bank, misapprehending motives, mis- 
taking causes for effects, and putting consequents before the an- 
tecedents. Throughout, a certain pliilosophical character is 
affected by assuming a position of indifference between contend- 
ing factions, and stating the views of both without inclining to 
either. There are certainly some cases, in which opposite 
parties represent different elements of the same truth, and are 
about equally right ; both, then, are to be appreciated, and 
neither to be condemned. But there are other instances, in 
which, without any doubt at all, one side is entirely right, and the 
other side is entirely wrong ; and for a man to hold his judgment 
in equilibrio, on such occasions, as this author clearly does, is 
merely to be absurd in a systematical manner, and to give up 
the approbation of men of sense for the applause of pedants and 
sciolists. The Baron's chapters suggest no new topics, and 
offer nothing fresh upon old ones. He seems to write even in 
ignorance of the progress which has been made by others in the 
philosophy of our character and institutions, so that his move- 
ment is effectually retrograde. The distinction between Federal 
or whig liberty and demo#acy, is of singular nicety and interest, 
and one which American and French authors have made some 
advance in developing ; but the present author totally fails to 
apprehend it, and lauds Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and 
Jackson, as men of the same stamp, differing in the degree of 
their republican feelings, but not in the nature of their political 
views. The observations on American Art, especially those on 
Greenough's sublime statue, are stupid beyond any thing we 
could have supposed possible. 

The truth is, intellect is a department of the Baron's educa- 
tion which has been neglected : and after all said and done, a 
man of inferior understanding cannot write a superior book. 
The Baron is a person of many kinds of knowledge, but the 
knowledge of the measure of his powers is not among them. 
In these pages "America and the American People," are (to use 
the quaint language of Burton's title page) " opened and cut 
up," geologically, physiologically, politically, and statistically, — 



^TAT. 28.] THE PROSE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON. 121 

every way, in short, except sensibly, ably, or agreeably. After 
reading a recent History on a great American subject, we con- 
cluded that flippancy was the worst fault of a historian ; but 
upon finishing Von Raumer, we are compelled to admit that 
dulness, when carried to such an extravagant excess, is quite 
as bad. 



The Prose Works of John Milton; with a Biographical Introduction. By 
R. W. Griswold. 

The mightiest spirit, probably, that ever illustrated in litera- 
ture the extent of human capacity, and the force of human -will, 
was Milton. In regard to his character as a poet, this appears 
to us to be the capital consideration, that he lived in an unpo- 
etical time. Nations have their ages, like individuals. Homer 
in the old world ; Dante and Petrarch in Italy ; in England, 
Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, flourished at a period in the 
national life, when fancy and sentiment, the staple of poetry, 
were still predominant over pure reason, — when manners were 
picturesque, and common life had the spirit of a romance — when 
the genial infusion of new feelings into old institutions was 
hourly realizing brilliant effects, — above all, when language, 
sensitive and intensely vital, responded with music to the least 
skilful touch. But for a man to rise up, as Milton did, after 
the era of Art has fairly past — when the fine enthusiasms of 
national youth and hope have been checked or extinguished, 
and a critical spirit has established itself in every department, ■ — ■ 
when society on the one hand is frivolous, and on the other is 
harsh, and stern, and dry — when contemporary literature ex- 
hibits only the weakness of inanity, or the more desperate 
weakness of extravagance, and when language has lost its 
esthetic vigor ;■ — for a man at such a time, to start aside from 
the mass, and laboriously educating himself into the originality 
and power of an early epoch, to develop from the depths of 
his own strenuous and teeming mind, a literary work of un- 
rivalable magnificence and grandeur, — stamped with the force 
11 



122 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

and freshness of a remote antiquity — against all models, and 
beyond all imitation,. — this appears to us to be a thing without 
a parallel, and to partake of the character of a prodigy. The 
colossal images of the Alps are natural at sunrise : to produce 
them at raid-day would be the work of magic. 

But if Milton, in his poetry, drew back in moody loneliness 
behind his contemporaries, in his philosophical writings he 
strides on as far before them. Indeed, after centuries of event- 
ful experience, and of mental discipline, it is only now that the 
general mind may be said to have been brought up to that level 
of freedom and fearlessness, from which Milton's speculations 
begin : it is only at this day that the world is able to read Milton. 
There are few treatises on political or social questions, a century 
and a half old, which would bear to be re-printed at this time. 
But Milton is still above us, though no longer beyond us. What 
strikes us when we turn to Paradise Lost, is the immensity of 
imaginative conception which we there meet with : and when 
we open any one of the larger treatises in this collection, we are 
equally caught by the elevation and extent of moral view which 
are displayed. We are not compelled to work through laborious 
processes in the close atmosphere of metaphysical subtlety ; we 
are taken up at once upon a lofty and commanding platform, 
bright and breezy, where the light of heaven shines upon us, 
and the divisions of the earth are marked out as on a map, be- 
neath our feet. The blaze of imagination discloses the recesses 
of Truth, and Inspiration does the work of analysis. The cir- 
cuitous caution and timid advance of the old strategy is rejected 
by this Napoleon of morals ; and the Sierras of falsehood are 
carried by a charge. 

Republican in all the constitution of his character — self- 
formed and self-reliant — hardy, conscientious and uncorrupt, — 
rejecting the control of others only that he might the more per- 
fectly control himself, — Milton realized by meditation that sub- 
limity of life which ift other cases only a great course of action 
has inspired ; and we believe that the most effective substitute for 
the elevating circumstances and scenes by which the august 



^TAT. 28.] THE PROSE AVORKS OF JOHN MILTON. 123 

characters of our revolution were produced, might be found in 
a right use of the prose works of Milton. 

Undoubtedly in many of Milton's papers we may find the true 
principles of English liberty, which are the origin of American 
Independence, and the safeguards of American society. There 
never has been any genuine freedom in the world, except that 
which has been developed by the constitutions of modern Europe, 
of which that of England has been agreed to be the best con- 
trived and the most advanced ; and it is only in so far as we 
maintain and enforce in this country the notion of constitutional 
principles and constitutional rights, that we can hope to keep 
alive any liberty here. We do not mean those edicts in limita- 
tion of political power which are contained in the written " con- 
stitutions" of the United States, and the several States, and 
which, in that form, derive their obligation from the consent 
and authority of the people who have established them in con- 
ventions. We refer to those fundamental, inherent and fixed 
principles upon which the system of Anglo-Saxon liberty is 
organized, and in which it subsists ; rational, not conventional ; 
existing in nature, and therefore not capable of being extin- 
guished by agreement or force ; indestructible ; the true rights 
of man in political society; any wilful departure from which 
justifies, even politically, rebellion and revolution. One of these 
principles, for example, is that which recognizes a distinction 
between a tax law, and every other kind of law, founded upon 
the difference between taking property and regulating conduct ; 
by which no law may be made which imposes a tax unequally, 
or without consent and without compensation. This is no 
formal, technical rule, which is satisfied by a literal compliance 
with it ; it is a great essential principle of reason, justice, and 
practical freedom ; founded in the temper of modern society, 
and traditionary in English politics ; and when any act of legis- 
lation emanating either from the omnipotence of Parliament or 
the sovereignty of the people, violates this maxim, in its spirit 
and tendency, it is, in the just meaning of the term, unconstitu- 
tional; and if it be persisted in without hope of alleviation, it 
becomes the duty of men, as citizens, and as subjects of the law, 



124 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

to rebel. Lord Coke maintained the noble doctrine that "An 
Act of Parliament against a common right is void," but in 
England it is now settled that Parliament in its legislative 
capacity judges of its own jurisdiction, and the judiciary has 
only power to interpret statutes, and not to set them aside. In 
this country, howevei*, we suppose it to be a general principle 
that the courts are to judge of the jurisdiction of the legisla- 
tures, as well in respect to those unwritten constitutional prin- 
ciples which exist of "common right," as in regard to those 
legal limitations which are prescribed in the written constitutions, 
and that when an Act is passed which, in a sound political point 
of view, is in contravention of the spirit of constitutional privi- 
leges and constitutional protection, as ascertained by the phi- 
losophy of modern political science, it becomes the right and 
duty of the judges to pronounce it void. The study of this 
subject becomes therefore of the first consequence to lawyers 
and statesmen, and in some of Milton's writings it is nobly 
taught. We are much obliged to Mr. Griswold for his ser- 
vices in putting us in possession of these handsome and con- 
venient books. His pen possesses considerable felicity ; and on 
this occasion he has written with unusual spirit. 



Memoirs of the Reigk op King George the Third. By Horace Walpole. 
2 vols. Philadelphia. 

Literature and history seem destined at present to be over- 
run with a flood of Walpoleism. Since we have holden our 
present office of usher of the Black Rod, to the sovereign Public, 
this, we believe, is something like the twelfth volume to which 
we have had the pleasure to invite attention. For a man who 
wrote nothing larger than a note or a tract, and nothing more 
dignified than a squib or a gossipping letter, and who had been 
in his grave twenty years when the first of this line of volumes 
took up its march, this, we think, will do very well. Horace 
"Walpole died in the winter of '96-97'; and five stately quarto 



^.TAT. 28.] HORACE WALPOLE. ] 25 

volumes, published within a year or two of that^ event, seemed 
to form "momimeutal pomp" enough for one who denied and 
deprecated the character and name of a literary man. As for 
those volumes themselves, they are books of scraps : and we 
may describe the whole work in the terms in which Walpole 
himself described the front of the old Versailles, as " a himber 
of littleness." It soon appeared, however, that this aifluent 
noble, much of his literary wealth as he had given to the public 
in his lifetime, had still an immense estate left, which, like Mr. 
Thelusson, he had entailed upon a remote posterity, to be enjoyed 
only after a life or lives in being, and some oue-and-twenty 
years afterwards. About 1820, a correspondence with the 
lively George Montague was published : then letters to Lord 
Hertford, and to Dr. Zouch : then appeared a series of three 
volumes of epistles to Sir Horace Mann, and soon after another 
series of four to the same dull and trifling person ; to say 
nothing of Ana, Reminiscences, &c. This of which we now 
have the second portion, is. in the English impression, a four 
volume work : and there is a talk of other mysterious piles of 
manuscripts, — of "Bag A," "Bundle B," and Cs and Ds, black 
with gouty hieroglyphics, and of unknown contents — which lead 
us to suppose that we see but the beginning of the thing. Really, 
if it were not for Walpole's frequent and serious protestations, 
posterity might be in danger of mistaking this man for an author. 
If it should take him for a persr)n morbidly eager for literary 
distinction, it would probably make no mistake at all. Wanting 
courage to attempt, as much as strength to accomplish, any 
great work, Walpole loved "to mumble of the game he dared 
not bite;" and inditing prefaces, tales, biographical notes, and 
other small performances, writing with infinite care those things 
which others wrote negligently, he labored to have it thought 
that he wanted nothing but the inclination, to beat all the 
Johnsons, Goldsmiths, and Burkes of the time, at their own 
weapons. Gilly Williams read his character with accuracy: 
" monstrari digito,''^ says that shrewd and witty person, in a letter 
printed by Mr. Jesse, "is the end and object of all he does : for 
this, he -^vrote, he built, he planted : to this we owe his Lord 
11* 



126 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^.tat. 28. 

Herbert, and in future we shall owe many entertaining things." 
So indeed it has proved ; for though the dicier Hie est, may be 
less than even an empty sound to the cold ear of Death, yet a 
feeling kindred to it has been the origin of these posthumous 
volumes. Knowing that gossip may acquire from time an in- 
terest not due to its worth, and thinking that a vast number of 
small works might be deemed equivalent to one great one, he 
devoted many hours of every day of his life, to perpetuating the 
anecdotes and incidents of the hour, in letters, memoirs and 
reminiscences. Neither gaiety nor the gout- — neither the dissi- 
pation and whirl of youth, nor the solitude and chalk-stones of 
old age — could stay the restless diligence of a pen, which thus 
wrote more than almost any professed author of the times ; 
until after about eighty years of action the " unwearied mill that 
turned ten thousand letters,^' at last stood still. This method 
of remote posthumous publication, seems to be one of the tricks 
of an actor who did nothing naturally, but all for notorietyl 

Walpole was, undoubtedly, a man of pretty parts : his wit, 
though not solid, strong, nor true, was delicate and sparkling : 
his turns of thought are lively and neat : he described manners 
with a success which showed the true level of his genius : he 
drew characters upon a happy system, which by abusing every- 
body, painted many correctly. If any one is inclined to refine 
his taste or point his style by a close study of Walpole's letters 
on society, we can offer no objection : but we make a protest 
against his books being regarded either as History, or as ma- 
terials for the formation of the historical judgments of the age. 
He was the nnfittest person of that century for the difficult and 
responsible duties of an aunallist. He had not the least regard 
for truth ; he had no judgment ; was as inquisitive, as credulous 
and as inaccurate as a lady's maid : and by the measure of his 
understanding was as incapable of appreciating what was great, 
as by the height of his moral sensibilities he was unwilling to 
believe or respect what was worthy. His vanity made him 
jealous of everybody ; and his ill-success inclined him to ma- 
lignity. He inherited all his father's animosities, and as to his 
contemporaries, wrote with the " recentihus odiis^^ fresh about 



^TAT. 2S.] HORACE WALPOLE. 127 

him. As to his own career, the newness of his family made 
him jealous of all the great lords ; his extreme anxiety to shine 
in affairs, and incapacity to do it, made him hate all the great 
statesmen and orators ; his efforts as an author caused him to 
look with scornful eyes on all real literary merit : and thus, 
about himself and the men of his own time, he wrote with little 
to guide his pen, save the "iVa et studio,''^ which distort the pic- 
ture that they animate, and discolor as much as they warm it. 
The present volume is but a series of outrageous libels : the 
wildest and most reckless charges are flung around on the right 
hand and the left ; infamous suggestions, without the smallest 
probability, made against the most excellent persons of the age : 
unbounded contempt thro^\Ti out against the wisest and ablest 
writers of the country, men who have since taken their rank 
among the great heroes of fame. The absurdity of such an 
attempt to degrade, belittle and blacken everybody and every- 
thing, and the wickedness of it, can be equalled only by the 
cowardly and cunning baseness of reserving the publication of 
the trash, until all who possessed a direct knowledge of the facts 
perverted or an immediate interest in the persons maligned, are 
dead, and there no longer remains ability or disposition to con- 
fute the mass of calumny. But the reputations of the great are 
the heritage of the race, and honesty and truth are the concern 
of all men ; and we venture a confident prophecy, that the high 
repute which Walpole justly acquired for wit and elegance, 
from the publication of his letters, is destined to be quite shaken 
by the discredit which the untruth and unfairness of his memoirs 
is certain to bring upon him. The fate of Archdeacon Coxe, 
is a warning to all future writers to place no reliance on Wal- 
pole's most confident statements about the private history of 
the court ; and the opinions of ,a whole nation are a sufficient 
confutation of his views of men and their motives. 

Of the eminent men under the Hanover dynasty, there are 
few whose reputation has increased more steadily, with the lapse 
of time, than Lord Hardwicke's : but Walpole writes of him 
thus : " The gloomy and revengeful temper of Hardwicke waited 
for an opportunity of repaying the disgrace Pitt had inflicted 



128 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 28, 

ou their cabal. The disgrace of his country was meditated, at 
least effected by Lord Hardwicke, as revenge on Mr. Pitt." 
(ii., p. 256.) Lord Mansfield's character had probably many 
weaknesses, and some blemishes ; but what in his career could 
justify such frantic outrages on common decency and common 
sense as this ? " Lord Mansfield was by birth, education, 
principle, cowardice, and revenge for the public odium, a 
bigot to tyranny. He would have sacrificed the universe, 
and everything but his personal safety, to overturn the con- 
stitution and freedom of England." (ii., p. 232.) Lord Chatham 
figures here as a ridiculous compound of arrogance, corruption 
and insanity; — Wedderburne, as "that abandoned man," who 
had "no superior in Westminster Hall for want of principles." 
(ii., p. 300.) To insult Burke, the ten-times confuted lie of his 
having been "born a papist" is gravely affirmed (ii., p. 189) ; and 
when Burke printed his splendid "Thoughts on the present 
Discontents," we are told that "Mrs. Macauley, whose princi- 
ples were more sound and more fixed than Burke's, and whose 
reasoning was more simple and more exact, published a short 
tract in answer." (ii., p. 251.) The extravagant absurdity of this 
is exceeded only by the character which he gives of Dr. John- 
son — a specimen of candor, truth and dignified writing, with 
which we close our extracts. " With a lumber of learning and 
some strong parts, Johnson was an odious and mean character. 
By principle a Jacobite, arrogant, self-sufficient, and overbearing 
by nature, ungrateful through pride, and of feminine bigotry, 
he had prostituted his pen to party even in a dictionary, and 
had afterwards, for a pension, contradicted his own definitions. 
His manners were sordid, supercilious and brutal, his style 
ridiculously bombastic and vicious ; and, in a word, with all 
the pedantry, he had all the gigantic littleness of a country 
schoolmaster." (ii., 2, p. 323.) 



^TAT. 28.] LETTERS OP THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 129 

The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield, including numerous Letters 
now first published from the Original Manuscripts. Edited with Notes by 
Lord Mahon. In four vols. London, Bentley, 1845. 

No sort of justice has been done by critics and historians to 
the great sense, high character, and noble accomplishments of 
the Earl of Chesterfield. In action, England, fertile of able 
politicians, never produced a more consummate statesman. As 
Loi-d-Lieutenant of Ireland, he carried the government in safety 
over the crisis of 1745; his firmness maintaining order, and his 
justice inspiring confidence, in a nation where the elements of 
discontent were more abounding and more violent than in the 
neighboring kingdom where the explosion actually took place. 
His policy has since been often appealed to by rival parties who 
agreed in nothing but their admiration of him ; and " his name, 
I am assured," says Lord Mahon, "lives in the honored remem- 
brance of the Irish people, as, perhaps, next to Ormond, the best 
and worthiest in their long vice-regal line." In letters. Lord 
Chesterfield exhibited qualities rare in kind, still rarer in their com- 
bination ; — a severe sagacity that nothing eluded, a rectitude of 
judgment that nothing could impose on, joined to a loftiness of 
spirit, a gaiety of temper, and a sensibility to all the charms of 
grace and beauty, that make him at once an instructor and a 
companion. He possessed singular delicacy of observation, 
which, however, never became entangled in its own refinements. 
The consciousness of talents to shine without a rival, in politics 
and fashion, never led him to overvalue those pursuits, or follow 
them beyond the dictates of respectability, propriety, or pru- 
dence. He had a range of intelligence which enabled him to see 
things in the light in which others saw them, without losing the 
truth of his own perceptions, and a versatility of powers to play to 
their views without departing from his own moral standards. 
Few men formed juster estimates of the value of things. Com- 
mon sense was his most eminent quality. Dr. Franklin himself 
was scarcely more rigorously practical in the tone of his judg- 
ments. Yet Chestei'field had the yet more uncommon ability 
to appreciate the thing-s which he despised, to allow for influ- 



130 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [.Etat. 28. 

ences wliicli he heartily condemned, and to accommodate himself 
temporarily to establishments which he constantly and avowedly 
labored to overthrow. This fine discrimination between truth 
and convenience, between permanent ends and occasional means, 
which his understanding took and his self-control maintained, 
permitted him to be politic without impairing his virtue, and to 
deal with trifles without ever lowering his dignity. Familiar 
with the homeliest and most solid parts of prudential ethics, he 
was an miapproached master in all that concerns the higher and 
more refined applications of it. His taste was wonderfully 
sound ; and his style, which commonly is the image of taste, 
though it was refined and correct, was perfectly simple, natural, 
and genuine ; and wholly free from quaintness, affectation, and 
fastidiousness. Rarely has life been looked at with a more keen 
and distinguishing eye, or the results of moral scrutiny been fixed 
in colors more brilliant and true. He knew how to reconcile 
and unite with manliness and solidity, those refinements of sen- 
timent and that delicacy of feeling, which are usually to be found 
only among the frivolous or immoral ; but which are so delight- 
ful and admirable as almost to make frivolity enjoyable and vice 
itself endurable. 

It is this thoroughly practical turn of Lord Chesterfield's cha- 
racter which has given rise to the popular opinion that he professed 
a system of loose and accommodating morals. We have read his 
correspondence, in one form or other, something like twenty 
times ; and unless the impressions of a life-long familiarity are 
at fe,ult, this popular opinion is a mistaken one. But the error 
is easily explained. Men of extreme common sense, who take 
up the pen, not to breathe their fancies in an airy chase of fine 
and flimsy sentiments, but to effect some actual result of convic- 
tion or conduct — such men as Franklin, Paley, Chesterfield — 
always understate their case and their argument, as much as 
the safety of their position will admit of: they lay the line of 
their requisitions as low as possible, and give, not the highest, 
best, or strongest reason for its adoption, but the simplest, most 
direct and least questionable one : they endeavor to identify the 
principle they are contending for, with some familiar and ad- 



^TAT. 28.] LETTERS OF THE EARL OP CHESTERFIELD. 131 

mitted truth of daily experience, and to associate the acceptance 
of it with some certain, palpable, material interest of the reader. 
In such cases, if we mistake for his conception of the abstract 
truth and right, what the author has put forward with a view 
only to practicability, or confound the motive which urged the 
writer with the reason which he has given to the reader, we 
make a great error. Thus Franklin, when he would persuade 
to early rising, appeals to the saving of coin that will be effected 
by using sunlight instead of lamplight : not that he was insen- 
sible to the romantic attractions of the subject, the cheering and 
exalting influences of the day-spring hour, — "the charm of early 
birds," and all the inspirations of the dawn — for his writings show 
that he was finely sensitive to all such suggestions ; but that he 
wished to rest his plea upon the lowest attainable ground, — a 
ground absolutely certain and unassailable. So it was with 
Paley : — finding that a spirit of critical and utilitarian philoso- 
phy was come up, which invalidated the logic and impeached 
the first principles of former theologians as much as it opposed 
the end which those principles and logic were employed to 
establish, he determined to take that enemy in the rear, and to 
occupy its own firmest and most favorite ground. He therefore 
proceeded to prove that morality is, upon the whole, a very con- 
venient thing ; that, extravagant as society is, in its general 
statement, it is quite as useful as any thing else that we set up 
in its stead ; and that the divinity of the Saviour and the inspi- 
ration of the Evangelists, absurd as they may be, carry fewer 
difficulties with them, after all, than any other theory that you 
can propose. This admirably sensible and sagacious way of 
dealing with the subject has conciliated and attracted as many 
cold hearts out of the church as it has offended hot heads within 
it, and hitherto has answered the zealots only by confuting the 
infidels. Chesterfield, substantially, was of the same stamp and 
temper as these men. Take an extreme case, — the most difficult 
for our argument in the whole of his book. He gives his son 
leave to have an intrigue with any woman of high fashion that 
he takes a fancy to ; nay, he rather advises him to it. This is 
certainly very bad indeed ; but, before we throw the book into 



132 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

the fire, let us look at the thing a moment. The Earl of Chester- 
field wished to accomplish a certain practical improvement in 
the character and conduct of his son. The young English, with 
whom his residence, his years, his pursuits, placed him in asso- 
ciation, were low and vicious in their habits and tastes. By 
persuasions, by entreaties, by commands, by threats, — by serious 
arguments and sportive raillery — he strives, without cessation, to 
keep this child from adopting their disgraceful style of life. In 
deciding on the means of effecting this result, we may imagine 
the Earl to debate somewhat thus with himself: "If I draw the 
bow too far, it infallibly breaks : if I insist on a course against 
which the spirit and passions of youth rebel, I destroy my own 
influence with the boy, and do not accomplish my purpose : if I 
let him see that I am not opposed to any species of his enjoy- 
ments, I gain his confidence and will be able gradually to mould 
him. It is a case for compromise : if he passes the evening with 
a lady of ton, he loses his virtue, it is true ; but if I do not send 
him to such a woman, he will certainly go himself to one of a 
lower sort, where, besides his virtue, he will lose his character 
and impair his manners to boot." The whole affair thus re- 
duces itself to a plain question in common arithmetic ; the woman 
of fashion carries the day, or the night, by all the difference of 
manners and character; and the same despatch which carries out 
an absolute prohibition to the youth from " s'sncanaillanV with 
the creatures of the opera and ballet, conveys a permission to 
break the seventh commandment with the gay and witty Madam 
So-and-so. Such is our impression of Chesterfield's system ; 
and when we find him inviting his son to turn over the classics 
in the morning, and la petite Blot in the evening, we see in that, 
not the laxity of a man of the world, careless of moral distinc- 
tions, but the anxious solicitude of a parent, who, fearing the 
utter ruin of his son, consents to give up a part, rather than risk 
the loss of all. That Chesterfield recognized the principles of 
morality, and felt their weight as much as any of the Sorbonne, 
it is scarcely possible for any candid reader of the letters to 
doubt : his mistake lay in the means of attaining an unquestioned 
end ; he erred in finessing in a matter where uncompromising 



.SiTAT. 28.] LETTERS OF THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 133 

thoroughness alone will do. For our own part, we will engage 
that if ten readers will go through these volumes, remembering 
that Chesterfield was not writing dissertations on morals, but 
was managing a practical task, and will compare, not their 
principles, sentiments, or intentions, but their actual past moral 
practice, with his practical standard, nine of the ten will find 
that his system is above theirs. As to the undecalogued part 
of morality, his teachings are beyond any man's criticism. In 
all that concerns decency, decorum, true dignity, genuine pro- 
priety, better instruction can nowhere be found ; and we are 
disposed to think that those qualities bring virtue with them, in 
their midst, so that he that seeks for them will find their queen. 
In justice, also, to the character of Chesterfield, it should be 
recollected that he did not undertake the whole education of his 
son, but having put him into the hands of an exemplary clergy- 
man of the Church, and written to him once a week to obey 
every thing that that gentleman told him, he felt himself at 
liberty to confine his own efforts to those outward and lighter 
matters in which alone the youth was deficient. We should be 
glad to enter more at large into the display of a mind and cha- 
racter in which we have long felt a peculiar interest, and which 
we cordially esteem and admire ; but our limits are already ex- 
ceeded. 

We suppose the work will soon be printed in this country, 
and we trust that whatever publisher undertakes to apparel and 
introduce the Earl, will suffer him to appear like a gentleman. 
We express in advance our disapprobation of the unworthy style 
in which the respectability of books is degraded by the opera- 
tions of more than one American publisher. Literature itself 
is insulted and injured, when it becomes a reproach to a gentle- 
man or lady to have handled the vulgar pamphlets in which the 
finest works have been given to the world. Let then the 
Harpers, or Avhoever else reprints these volumes, take this occa-* 
sion to solve the insoluble problem of the modern press, in uniting, 
if they must reduce the size, compression of form with distinct- 
ness and elegance, and in sparing the purse without increasing 
the expense of eyesight. They will be entitled to better praise 
12 



134 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

than any which they have yet received, if they will inaugurate 
an era in popular printing, in which cheapness shall be no longer 
synonymous with vileness, nor those works which are addressed 
to the taste and are intended to delight the most refined and 
sensitive part of our being, be the least reputable part of the 
furniture of our drawing-rooms. 



Spence's "Anecdotes of Books and Men." 

This book, of which an American reprint is said to be con- 
templated by a Philadelphia publisher, is one of the most curious 
and entertaining volumes in our language, and it is one of the 
least known. It is a sizeable octavo, consisting of remarks 
made to Mr. Spence in conversation by Pope, Bolingbroke, 
Warburton, Le Sage, Lady Montague, and many other distin- 
guished persons. It is the "Boswell" of the era of the two 
first Georges. The fate of this extraordinary collection is one 
of the most singular in literary history. In consequence of the 
unwillingness of the Duke of Newcastle to have it published, it 
remained in manuscript for about sixty years after the author's 
death. It was referred to by Warton for his Essay on Pope ; 
Malone made use of it for his edition of Dryden ; and it was 
placed at Dr. Johnson's disposal for his Lives of the Poets, who 
thought "the communication of it a favor worthy of public ac- 
knowledgment." After exciting infinite curiosity among literary 
persons for more than half a century, two editions from different 
manuscripts were published in the year 1 820, and both may be 
said to have fallen still-born from the press. Curiosity seems 
to have been exhausted by protracted expectation. 

Yet I know of no volume which contains a richer fund of wit 
and wisdom, and amusing lore. It presents an elegant picture 
of the drawing-room conversation of the gifted and accomplished 
men that adorned English literature and enlivened English 
politics in the beginning of the last century. Here we have a 
minute picture of the studies, tastes, and literary and domestic 



^TAT. 28.] SPENCE'S ANECDOTES OF 1300KS AND MEN. 135 

liabits of Pope ; the bold, dashing and vigorous conversation of 
him "whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines;" the eccentric 
and brilliant Earl of Peterborough ; the sagacious and powerful 
observations of Warburton, never without a tinge of malice ; the 
philosophical and elegant remarks of Bolingbroke, always with 
a touch of nobleness ; and the learned, discursive and delightful 
anecdotes of the Chevalier Ramsay. 

The author is the Rev. Joseph Spence, who wrote the Poly- 
metis and other literary works. He was a man of considerable 
learning, extensive curiosity and polished taste. His death was 
singular. He was found dro\\aied in his garden, in a pool which 
was not deep enough to cover his head as he lay extended. The 
wits of the time amused themselves by observing that the man 
who could be drowned in such a stream must have been still 
shallower than the water. 

The chief value of the book consists in the moral and critical 
reflections which it contains ; but as these are less interesting to 
general readers, I shall select only a few of the anecdotes. 

Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was perhaps the vainest man that 
ever lived, yet an excellent painter and a pleasant wit, figures 
very amusingly in this volume. 

" Did you never hear Sir Godfrey's dream ?" said Pope one 
day. "No." "Why, then, I'll tell it to you. A night or two 
ago," said Sir Godfrey, "I had a very odd sort of dream. I 
dreamt that I was dead, and soon after found myself walking in 
a narrow path that led up between two hills, rising pretty equally 
on each side of it. Before me I saw a door, and a great number 
of people about it. I walked on toward them. As I drew 
nearer I could distinguish St. Peter by his keys, with some 
other of the apostles ; they were admitting the people as they 
came next the door. When I had joined the company, I could 
see several seats, every way, at a little distance within the door. 
As the first, after my coming up, approached for admittance, 
St. Peter asked him his name and then his religion. ' I am a 
Roman Catholic,' replied the spirit. 'Go in, then,' says St. 
Peter, 'and sit down on those seats there on the right hand.' 
The next was a Presbyterian : he was admitted too, after the 



136 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

usual questions, and ordered to sit down on the seats opposite to 
the other. My turn came next, and as I approached, St. Peter 
very civilly asked me my name. I said it was Kneller. I had 
no sooner said so than St. Luke (who was standing just by) 
turned toward me, and said with a great deal of sweetness — 
' What ! the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller from England ?' 
'The very same, sir,' says I, 'at your service.' On this St. 
Luke immediately drew near to me, embraced me, and made 
me a great many compliments on the art we had both of us 
followed in this world. He entered so far into the subject that 
he seemed almost to have forgot the business for which I came 
thither. At last, however, he recollected himself, and said : 
' I beg your pardon. Sir Godfrey ; I was so taken up with the 
pleasure of conversing with you I But, apropos, pray, sir, what 
religion may you be of?' 'Why, truly, sir,' says I, 'I am of no 
religion.' ' 0, sir,' says he, 'you will be so good then as to go 
in and take your seat where you please.' " 

"I paid Sir Godfrey a visit," said Pope, "but two days be- 
fore he died. I think I never saw a scene of so much vanity in 
my life. He was lying in bed, and contemplating the plan he 
had made for his own monument. He said he should not like 
to lie among the rascals stt Westminster ; a memorial there would 
be sufficient, and desired me to write an epitaph for it." 

The younger Richardson (in the Richardsoniana) has fur- 
nished us with another anecdote of this scene, which he had 
from Pope. The poet, finding his friend impatient at tlie 
thoughts of going out of the world, told him he had been a 
very good man, and no doubt would go to a better place. The 
dying artist reproved this meagre cant very humorously. "Ah! 
my good friend, Mr. Pope," said he, "I wish God would let me 
stay at Whitton." 

There are in this volume some conversations of the Signora 
Rosalba, a painter of miniatures at Venice, all of which taste of 
true genius. She remarked of Sir Godfrey : " I concluded he 
could not be religious, because he was not modest.''^ 

" As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day," said Pope, 
"whilst he was drawing a picture, he sto])ped and said, ' I can't 



JEtst. 2S.J ^PENCE'S ANECDOTES OF BOOKS AND MEN. 137 

do so well as I should do, unless you flatter me a little ; pray 
flatter me, Mr. Pope! You know I love to be flattered.' I 
was once willing to try how far his vanity would carry him, and 
after considering a picture, which he had just finished, for a good 
while very attentively, I said to him in French, (for he had been 
talking for some time before in that language,) ' On lit dans Ics 
Uci'itures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit Vhomme apres son 
image : mats, je crois, que sHl voudroit faire un autre a pre- 
sent, quHl le feroit apri^s Vimage que voild.^ Sir Godfrey 
turned around and said very gravely — ' Vous avez raison, 
Monsieur Pope ; par Dieu, je le crois aussV " 

Secretary Craggs brought Dick Estcourt once to Sir God- 
frey Kjieller's, where he mimicked several persons whom he 
knew ; as, Lords Godolpbin, Somers, Halifax, etc. Sir Godfrey 
was highly delighted, took the joke and laughed heartily : then 
they gave him the wink, and he mimicked Sir Godfrey himself, 
who cried, " Nay, now you are out, man ; by heaven, that is 
not me." 

It seems, however, that when the point played upon the 
vanity of the artist, the latter could sometimes put teeth in his 
replies. When Sir Godfrey was once talking very freely about 
the imperfections of the world, Pope said to him, " If Sir God- 
frey had been consulted, the world would have been made more 
perfect ;" Kneller immediately turned round, and looking at the 
diminutive person of the bard, said, with a good-humored 
smile, "AVithout doubt, there are some little things in it I think 
I could have mended." 

Such is the anecdote which Bowles, in the notes to his 
edition of Pope, gives us as the true version of a story differ- 
ently related by both Walpole and Warton. He gives no 
authority for his form of the reply ; and their account, which 
makes Sir Godfrey's answer a simple assent to Pope's observa- 
tion, strikes me as more consistent with Sir Godfrey's character, 
whose vanity often trenched upon the bounds where sanity 
ceases and idiotcy begins. Bowles's narrative has too full-dress 
an air ; and smells strongly of the malignity which that editor 
delighted to infuse into everything he wrote about that great 
12* 



138 LTTERAllY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

and admirable poet. I rather incline to think that they are all 
versions of the story above related about the picture. 

Here is an anecdote which Dr. Warburton related, and which 
would have made Rabelais shake with laughter in his " easy- 
chair." It is as capital a specimen of natural or accidental 
humor as history affords. 

Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day when his 
nephew, a Guinea-trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir God- 
frey, " you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in 
the world." " I don't know how great you may be," said the 
Guineaman, " but I don't like your looks. I have often bought 
a man much better than both of you together, all muscles and 
bones, for ten guineas." 

There are several anecdotes of Kneller, in the Richardso- 
niana ; but they display nothing but a gross, besotted vanity, 
that excites disgust rather than merriment. The passions are 
amusing only so long as they are struggling with reason ; 
when they have extinguished it, the object excites only pity or 
aversion. 

I add another anecdote or two from Spence. 

When Sir Isaac Newton was consulted about the rise of 
South-Sea stock — "I cannot estimate the madness of the peo- 
ple," replied the geometer. 

" Sacrez-vous vos roisV^ said the Prince of Celemar to Lord 
Peterborough. "Si nous les sacrons, Monsieur,''^ was the reply. 
" Parhleu, nous les mas-sacrons.^' 

"In the coffee-house yesterday," said Swift, "I received a 
letter, in which there was one word which consisted of but one 
syllable, and that syllable of but one letter, and yet the fellow 
had contrived to have three false spellings in it." It was the 
word eije that was written for I. 

Filicaja, in his sonnets, makes use of many expressions bor- 
rowed from the Psalms, and consequently not generally under- 
stood by the Italians. A gentleman of Florence, on reading 
some of the passages in him, (which were taken literally from 
David,) cried out — " Oh, are you there again with your Lom- 
bardisms !" and flung away the book as not worth the reading. 



^TAT. 28.] ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY. J 39 

Dr. Arnold's Lectures on Modern History-, and Miscellaneous 
"Writings. 

" Dr. Arnold is justly entitled to rank among the great men 
of the world," says an amiable gentleman, whose lucubrations 
are at present before us. This is not exactly true. He was an 
ingenious, independent, earnest speculator, — quick to catch the 
suggestions of an enlightened skepticism, and fearless in follow- 
ing them out even to their extreme conclusions ; never trusting 
to the dead reckoning in his political or moral course, but con- 
stantly taking new observations, on all matters of personal or 
social concern — generally plausible, sometimes able, always 
honest : — ^but there goes more to the making of a great man 
than the master of Rugby had attained. He was a man of many 
talents, and of many virtues, possessing some of both in extra- 
ordinary degrees ; his writings deserve the studious considera- 
tion of scholars, and his character demands the sympathy and 
reverence of all : but that comprehension, calmness, expansion, 
strength and firmness, which give a nature of greatness to 
either mind or morals. Dr. Arnold had not. Indeed, an intel- 
lect that was marked by so many novelties of opinion, could 
never be of the first order ; for the highest intellects, though they 
cast the truths of experience into new order, and furnish new 
demonstrations of them, yet always move parallel with the col- 
lective sense of the world, and in their spirit and conclusions 
are in harmony with it. Arnold loved paradox ; and it was a 
recommendation of any view to him that it contradicted the 
practice of ages, or the instinct of the nation ; such wisdom, we 
will only say, is of another stamp of greatness from that of 
Johnson, Burke and Mackintosh. His intelligence was of the 
microscopic sort ; he saw the particular matter before him, with 
startling clearness, and an exaggerated distinctness, because the 
light was concentrated and the field of vision narrow. His 
mental apprehension was too sensitive, which made its opera- 
tions fall too much into intensities. As a consequence of this, 
his inductions were often hurried and partial ; his opinions ran 
into affections: and those difTcrcnces which should have been 



140 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 28. 

taken merely as distinctions of the judgment, were held with 
something of the ardor and vehemence of passion. He asserted 
with unquestioning dogmatism; and attacked -the notions of 
others with an intolerant and heated zeal, which, as he changed 
his own opinions frequently, exposed him to misunderstanding 
and injury. In the combination of his moral virtues there was 
a want of proportion. If none were absent, at least some were 
in excess. The materials of the moral structure were rare and 
admirable ; the architecture faulty. Particular tones in the 
symphony were of a superhuman loveliness ; the whole not quite 
harmonious. He engages by his sincerity; stirs us with his 
animation and eagerness; raises and refines our principles by 
the purity of purpose and conscious integrity of design which 
everywhere are apparent in his writings : but he fails to com- 
mand the confidence of our minds, and we attend to his finest 
displays with the guarded interest and suspecting admiration 
which we lend to an enthusiast, rather than the respect and 
deference which we pay to a guide and teacher. 

But the point of view in which the characteristics of Dr. 
Arnold strikes us as possessing most interest, consists in looking 
at him as a "sign of the times," — a representative of the quali- 
ties and influences of the present century, — a time described by 
Carlyle, accurately enough, as "destitute of faith, and terrified 
at skepticism." The social and political development of nations 
has been hitherto carried on by the united operation of two 
divergent elements, — those of Order and Progress ; and almost 
every mind has been constituted by nature for serving under 
the banner of one or other of these principles, the grand re- 
sultant of whose antagonist action is seen in the actual history 
of the world. This distinction, which is in effect that of whig 
and tory, runs through all time and appears in every European 
nation: and almost every great mind, especially among the 
English, may be referred to one or other of these types. But 
of late years, in England particularly, this distinction seems to 
have become confused in the politics of the country, and one 
new blended system to have taken the place of the two opposing, 
yet harmonious elements, which formerly wrought out the go- 



^TAT. 28.] MONTAGUE'S SELECTIONS. 141 

vernment. It is therefore not surprising tliat a corresponding 
anomaly sliould show itself in the frarne or operation of the 
eminent minds of the time ; or that an Arnold should appear in 
philosophy when a Peel is found on the Treasury Bench. As the 
opinions and sentiments of such men are not associated accord- 
ing to the laws which we had become familiar with in either of 
the other two classes, we are inclined to call them inconsistent 
and self'Contradictory. It is true, they are metaphysically re- 
pugnant and irregular : but it does not follow that positively 
they are false. Dr. Arnold might be characterized, in religion, 
as a Kempis-Yoltaire ; in politics, as a Johnson-Cobbett. His 
theory of society was a mosaic of Toryism inlaid with Radicalism : 
his scheme of government was absolutism interleaved with 
anarchy. The principle of a church he asserted with an ardor 
and constancy as great as Newman's, and fought with still 
greater eagerness, against every practical embodiment of the 
principle. He maintained the union of Church and State in 
the abstract, and battered it down in detail. All this renders 
his character curious and his writings remarkable. Those who 
know how to read such authors may draw much instruction 
from his volumes. He shakes up the elements of opinion in his 
reader, and sets one to thinking on many subjects which one 
had scarcely deemed questionable before. Whether, as men 
now are, there is much benefit likely to flow from that, we shall 
not try to determine. 



Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading. VoL xxvi. ; contain- 
ing selections from Taylor, Barrow, South, Fuller, &o. By Basil 
Montague. New York, Wiley & Putnam, 161 Broadway. 

Tins is a noble series of works, and we desire to commend it, 
specially, to the patronage of families and individuals. It seems 
to us to be peculiarly important, at this time, that the commu- 
nity should manifest a decided and active interest in favor of 
publications which pretend to some better merits than were 
popularity and cheapness. We confess that we have begun to 
feel some concern about the ultimate results of cheap printing, 



142 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 2S. 

specious and alluring as some of its attractions undoubtedly are. 
The old system of publication it has pretty completely broken 
up ; and the channels of what was termed the trade have become 
so much disturbed, that a recurrence to it is not easily practi- 
cable. If, therefore, the new method is not to develop from 
itself a literature equal, or superior to the old one, in the sub- 
stantial excellence of the works, or in the mechanical execution 
of them, the mere privilege of buying worthless volumes at a 
low price, will poorly compensate us for the inability to get 
handsome and good ones on any terms whatever. Hitherto, it 
must be admitted, the results have been truly melancholy ; and 
we cannot see that matters exhibit any tendency to recover 
themselves ; on the contrary, the declension, both in the cha- 
racter and the appearance of the works, has rather gone on at a 
more rapid rate, as the system has become more firmly estab- 
lished. The new style of publication is sufficiently well suited 
to that kind of literature, now perhaps the most abundant, whose 
popularity is as transient as it is rapid and universal ; for the 
volume itself has worn out and perished, when the interest of the 
composition has exhaled ; and the one is fit only to be cast forth 
from the drawing-room or the shop about the same time that 
the other is ejected forever from the regard and recollection of 
readers. But books fit to be kept, must be printed with some 
elegance, to allow of their preservation ; a publisher, however, 
cannot safely make this provision for future times, unless he is 
allowed the benefit of the present popularity of the work. But 
now, a cheap edition strikes in between him and his market, and 
his more costly publication remains upon his shelves to await 
the lagging demand of those who shall be desirous of reading 
the work after the other impression has vanished from existence. 
Accordingly, all descriptions of publishers, both regulars and 
volunteers, have joined in one reckless race of cheapness and 
vulgarity for the depreciated prize of popularity. Each has 
succeeded enough to ruin the others, but not enough to benefit 
himself; and the public which was the dupe of its own short- 
sighted cupidity, finds at last that if it has given little, it has 
got less than nothing. 



iETAT. 28.] MONTAGUE'S SELECTIONS. 143 

Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading is an honor- 
able and laudable attempt to introduce a better state of things. 
The volumes are cheap, but they are printed with what would 
have been superior elegance even in the days of octavos and 
leather bindings ; the moral and literary tone of the works is 
the highest and most unexceptionable. They consist in almost 
all instances of selections from those works which, though 
adapted to be extensively popular, are yet, in point of fact, 
somewhat difficult to obtain ; having agreeableness enough to 
make them universally acceptable, and a tone of refinement and 
purity high enough to save them from notoriety. Some of the 
works are not merely salutary, but, as Bacon would say, "medi- 
cinal to the times." A man may count it among his good deeds, 
tending to the repose of conscience at the close of his life, to 
have been instrumental in giving circulation to such a book as 
that which comes so immediately under our notice as the twenty- 
sixth volume of this series — Basil Montague's Selections. We 
are not favorably inclined, as a general thing, to these excerpted 
presentations of an author now becoming quite common among 
us. " Distilled books," says Bacon, " like distilled waters, are 
flashy things ;" and selections are, as commonly, vapid ones. 
But there is room for discrimination. To compile Beauties from 
Addison, Specimens of Johnson, or Selections out of Irving, — 
writers of short papers, in which every paragraph is a specimen 
of composition, every sentence a selected elegance, and every 
phrase beautiful — is a plain mistake. But the great authors of 
an earlier time — the heroic age in letters — thought that an en- 
during reputation could be established only by some large 
treatise on some vast and comprehensive topic ; they likened a 
book to an animated being, to which form and organization are 
of vital consequence, or to a building, such as a cathedral, of 
which magnitude, proportion, and detail are of the essence. 
These colossal productions, though they have kept their authors' 
names alive, have not been able to keep themselves so. If the 
subject was useful, and the conclusion right, the result passed 
into the general sense of the world, and the process ceased to 
have interest ; if the theme was temporary, or the deduction 



144 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

mistaken, every succeeding critic signalized the failure of a work 
in which perhaps he could not have written the feeblest section. 
Either way, they remain as monuments of the strength or ex- 
travagance of the human intellect, but have ceased to be a part 
of the living literature of the nation. Yet are they, like the 
tombs of the old Etruscan kings, full of rare treasures. They 
are abounding in all the wealth of thought and language ; a 
majestic rhetoric rolling along, in a sounding stream, the con- 
fluent riches of wisdom and wit, learning and invention, moral 
prophecy and politic shrewdness. All that has permanent and 
present interest, for any man, in these works, — all that common 
readers can enjoy or that the studious book-man does, in point 
of fact, revert to and dwell upon, may be brought into the com- 
pass of a very few pages. Indeed, the disgust occasioned by 
the formal cast, and scholastic manner, and antiquated style of 
these writers, is so great, that to be read at all, they must be 
read thus, as it were, from the commonplace book of a candid 
and judicious scholar. Who, for example, now cares to be 
amazed and fatigued by the daring subtleties of "The Divine Le- 
gation ?" Yet, what examples of sense and sarcasm, what pre- 
cious illustrations, and what vivid eloquence might be picked 
out of it ! How many at present, are eager to wade through 
the morasses of quotations from whose midst spring Taylor's 
fairy islands of originality, for the sake even of the fragrant 
flow§rs and golden fruit that bloom there as they bloom no- 
where else ? Who is willing to sit out one of Fuller's elabor- 
ated and highly-spirited entertainments, though a single dish 
from his profuse table would be prized as a feast-day's dinner 
to the daintiest modern appetite ? Many could enjoy the ethics 
and poetry of Bacon who can make nothing of his science, and 
admire the copious logic of Barrow, or taste the strong sagacity 
and as strong humor of South, who care little for their theology. 
The merit of Basil Montague in this selection, consisted there- 
fore, in perceiving the exactly fitting application of a plan which 
had been applied injudiciously a hundred times : this being one 
of the many cases in which it requires more understanding to 
use a conception rightly than to have originally suggested it 



;Etat. 28.] MONTAGUE'S SELECTIONS. 145 

A collectioQ like this, restricted to relics of antiquity, differs 
from Elegant Extracts, or Beauties of Popular Authors, furnish- 
ed with miniature specimens of what we are daily conversant 
with in large, in the same way that a museum differs from a 
baby-house. We may add that the compilers of Anthologies 
might, we think, properly take a hint from Mr. Montague's ex- 
ample ; and leaving alone Milton, Shakspeare, and Pope — ge- 
ranium authors of whom every leaf is a flower — bring the pro- 
cess of excerpting to bear upon Lee, Blackmore, Davenant, and 
Drayton, writers who have five lines well worth remembering 
among five hundred scarce worth reading. 

Montague is well known to professional persons as an eminent 
chancery lawyer ; and recently to the public by his edition of 
Bacon, — in our judgment, a very respectable, but very complete 
failure. His powers are not great ; but his reading has been 
extensive and curious ; his taste is delicate and correct ; his 
sympathies high and good ; and his principles amiable, enlight- 
ened, and humane. His name will long be remembered from 
its connection with this pleasing volume, a work which will 
prove as useful to the morals of this age and succeeding ones, 
as it is honorable to the past. As we open it an atmosphere 
of quiet and awe seems to expand around us, filled with 
the lustre of purity and peace. We find ourselves on the hill- 
top of virtue and truth, in the presence of august intelligencies, 
arrayed in stainless garments and conversing together as in a 
cloud of heaven ; and we cannot err in thinking that it is good 
for any one to be here. A feeling almost sad creeps over us 
with the reminiscences that the names of Taylor, Fuller, and 
Milton call up ; and we are nearly ready to fly away from " the 
guilt and fever of city life" and professional strain, and abide 
always in "the still air of delightful studies." 

We had intended to offer a few suggestions to the editor of 
this series, whoever he may be, as to the future contents of his 
list ; but upon looking at the advertisement in the last number, 
where we see the names of Laudor, De Quincey, and Beckford, 
we believe that we are anticipated as to nearly all that we should 
have named. In regard to Landor, we take it for granted that the 
13 



146 LITEEAllY CRITICISMS. [Mtw. 29. 

editor will not overlook " The Citation and Examination of 
Shakspeare for Deer Stealing," nor the Dialogues of Petrarch 
and Boccacio, both of which, we believe, were published anony- 
mously. Of Mr. De Quincey, we shall of course have the 
articles on Shakspeare, Pope, and Schiller, from the Encyclo- 
pasdia, the articles in Blackwood, and a judicious selection from 
those in Tait. What would the editor think of "The Doctor," 
&c. ? Only two volumes of the five were ever published in this 
country, and those so villainously that it is a charitable hope 
that not a single impression is now to be found. Has he ever 
fallen in with a little work called " Conversation at Cambridge" 
— an exquisite morsel of scholarship and genius ; or another 
called "The Living and the Dead" — full of genuine humor, 
brilliant sense, and beautiful composition? We have several 
of Lamb's works in the series ; we confess we should like to 
see his letters as published by Talfourd. But we have entire 
confidence in the resources and good judgment of the gentleman 
who presides over the work, and are quite sure that nothing 
really proper will be omitted. 



A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies, etc. By Samuel 
AVarren, Esq., of the Inner Temple. 

Mr. Canning said of Ward, the author of Tremaine, who 
\ATote also on the Law of Nations, that his law books were as 
pleasant as novels, and his novels as dull as law books. Li that 
instance there was more truth in the disparaging half of the re- 
mark, than it was at all necessary that there should be in any 
thing so witty. Those who did not relish the politics or the pecu- 
liar humor of " Ten Thousand a Year," might be disposed to think 
that something of the same transposition of talents had taken 
place in Mr. Warren's case, and that a portion of the prosiness 
had been let out upon the scenes which ought to have been re- 
served for the Studies. For our o^^^l part, however, we have 
always thought that work the most readable novel, and the best 
worth preserving, of any since the death of Scott. But what- 



^TAT. 29.] WARREN'S LAW STUDIES. 14'7 

ever may be thouglit of the present treatise, there will be no 
doubt among any class of readers, that it has all the liveliness 
and point of a clever romance. The first edition was exten- 
sively read both here and in England ; this new edition presents 
not merely an enlarged and improved version of the original 
production, but in addition, another separate work incorporated 
with it, of a more practical character, — exhibiting an outline of 
civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical law, as those distinctions exist 
in England, — an account of the immense changes which the 
legislation of the last fifteen years has made in conveyancing, — 
an abstract of the principles of pleading, which is none the worse 
of being pretty literally copied from Sergeant Stephen, — and a 
view of the jurisdiction and proceedings of the Spiritual Courts, 
a subject highly curious and interesting to American readers. 

Mr. Warren's book is as good a book, we suppose, as could 
be made by anybody upon this plan : but we have no very high 
respect for the design itself. We have doubts of the practica- 
bility of thus trying to shoot between wind and water ; and are 
inclined to think, in endeavoring to be at the same time popular 
and professional, the author will have to meet the fate of those 
who are candidates for inconsistent honors. There are many 
ways of making legal martinets and petit-maitres ; there is only 
one way to make a lawyer, and that is, earnest, concentrated, 
continued hard labor ; the " live-like-a-hermit and work-like-a- 
horse" method of Lord Eldon. And it appears to us to be 
more desirable that all the native difficulties, roughness, and 
disgusts of the thing, should be met at once; and that the 
student should understand, at the very threshold of the profes- 
sion, that his taste and temper must be accommodated to the 
law, and not that the law is to be moulded to suit his temper 
and tastes. And if it were possible to make the preparation for 
the law an easy and pleasant matter, it would be, in our opinion, 
a very unfortunate thing. The discipline of difficulty, — the al- 
terative and bracing influences of its severity and rigor — are the 
inestimable blessings which the study of the law promises to 
those who adopt it. To simplify it in such a way that it should 
require no eff'ort, no patient research, no long, keen courses of 



148 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

thought, would be as injudicious as to make the exercises of the 
gymnasium, — the climbing of ladders, the jerking of dumb bells, 
or the swinging on parallel bars — light and unfatiguing : in both 
cases, it is in the hardness of the occupation that its value con- 
sists. The law is, and always must be, a severe, perplexing, 
profoundly difficult science, adapted only to great intellects, in 
whose constitution all the faculties have been happily developed 
in their fullest force and fineness, by principle, circumstances, 
or the power of passions ; because the subject with which the 
legal mind deals is complicated of all the variety of earthly oc- 
currences, the confusion of worldly conjunctures, the range and 
obliquity of human interests. Those who propose to make law 
simple and easy, seem to us to make a mistake as to what law 
means, as a profession and practical science. It is not an afi'air 
of books ; it does not lie in a knowledge of certain traditions and 
secrets among a certain set of men, and a familiarity with some 
special ceremonies and rites connected with particular public 
tribunals. It consists in the ordering of human society, in the 
settlement of men's interests, the vindication of respective rights, 
and the adjustment of the moral relations of the community. To 
find out the truth of a protracted and involved course of action 
— to discover how far and in how many different directions the 
line of justice has been departed from by all parties concei'ned, 
and how, accurately and safely, the tangled error can be brought 
straight ; — this is the law ; this is what the Counsellors, and 
the Judges, are engaged about ; the definitions, rules, maxims 
and forms, which fill the text-books, are not the profession or 
practice itself, but are designed to minister to that of which they 
might be said to form no part whatever ; — to simplify, by re- 
ducing as much as is possible to general and familiar concep- 
tions,. — to aid, by suggestions of good sense and sound logic, 
embodied in fixed usages and received axioms, to keep the sa- 
gacity of the professors on the alert, and impart rectitude to 
their judgment. Such being the case, it is plain that the real 
stress and pressure of this great practical profession, never can 
be lessened until the elements and laws of moral being are 
changed ; and the subject of legal education resolves itself into 



JEtat. 29.] AVARREN'S LAW STUDIES. I49 

a question whether the strain shall be diffused over years of irk- 
some and laborious education, or be accumulated upon the oc- 
casions of practice. It appears to us, that so far from striving 
to coddle and intenerate the mental fibres of the young appren- 
tice to the law, by facilitating every process, the effort should 
be rather to heap difficulties and trials upon that period of pro- 
bation, provided, of course, that the matter is not carried to the 
extent of shocking and breaking down the spirit and strength. 
That the youthful nature is disinclined to effort, we know very 
well ; but that any one should be disposed to humor and foster 
this disposition, is to us surprising. Such is the law of our im- 
perfect condition, that labor is our greatest privilege and bless- 
ing ; the true path to happiness ; the appropriate development 
of our best power ; the only source of our highest virtues. Be- 
sides this, we are inclined to think that by making preliminary 
study easy, one great incentive to after professional energy will 
be withdrawn. A long, distressing discipline of research and 
thought leaves a kind of fine resentment in the nature : a man is 
anxious to wreak the power which he feels within him, upon 
some high course of pi'ofessional action ; to justify the propriety 
of his long, solitary labors, to himself and others, by displaying 
an abundance of valuable fruits from them ; to vindicate his own 
conscious superiority against the negligence of society, by forc- 
ing himself to distinction. In addition to this, by simplifying 
study, and communicating the results of knowledge, instead of 
imparting the means of attaining it, you take away a great part 
of the knowledge itself; at least, you impair the distinctness 
with which it is apprehended. A man never fully knows 
any truth, till he has discovered it, anew, for himself; nor 
wholly understands a conclusion till he has seen it analytically 
in the form of its elements. The old way of teaching boys 
to swim, was to plunge them souse into the river, and let 
them kick for their lives : now, they tie cork jackets on 
them, and give a great deal of instruction in hydrostatics and 
anatomy, beforehand. But it is easier, in every thing, to proceed 
from the practice to the theory, than from the theory to the 
practice : practice, indeed, teaches the theory, and is the only 
13* 



150 LITEliARY ClUTICrSMS. [^]rAT. 28. 

way of learning it thoroughly, but theory does not teach prac- 
tice. We would give more for the few, definite, precise, and 
actual notions which a young man will have after Avorking and 
crying over Littleton, than the mass of vague, vaporous half- 
shaped conceptions he will ever acquire from a book of this sort. 
We do not mean to disparage Mr. Warren's treatise in particular ; 
but only the system to which it is accommodated. His work is 
ingenious and amusing ; and in an age like this, which is at once 
restless, busy and inactive, and is fond of touching knowledge at 
a great many points, it is adapted to be generally popular. 



The Life op the Rev. Joseph Blanco White. Written by himself; with 
Portions of his Correspondence. Edited by John Hamilton Thom. In 
three vols. London, 1845. 

We know not why these curious and instructive volumes have 
not yet found a publisher in this country ; unless it be that 
they are neither fantastic enough, nor prurient enough, to be 
suited to the popular taste. They are the record of the life of 
a most amiable and excellent person, whose religious nature 
having once got out of poise, was never happy enough to re- 
cover its balance. Sincere, earnest, acute even to subtlety, he 
was able to confute all errors, but never able to settle the truth. 
If a man has but a touch of philosophy in him, he must read 
this autobiography with a profound and almost painful interest. 
If he is himself a wanderer, he will desire aid and guidance ; if, 
happily, his own views are fixed, he will rise from its perusal 
" a sadder and a wiser man." The experience which it records, 
is such as probably only the nineteenth century could have 
rendered practicable, and which a man must have been very 
peculiarly situated even then to partake of. Chillingworth's 
variations, indeed, bear some resemblance to Blanco's ; but his 
were merely speculative and notional, while Blanco's were actual, 
practical, and real. Here is a man who passes in succession 
through the characters of a devoted Romish priest, an atheist, 
an earnest clergyman of the Church of England, an Unitarian, 
a rationalist, an utter unbeliever in all revelation ; proving the 



^TAT. 2H.J BLANCO WHITE. 151 

soundness of each of these systems while he is hi it, and its utter 
falseness the instant he has left it ; yet in all these changes 
never weakening the integrity nor sullying the sensitive purity 
of his moral nature, and never forfeiting the esteem and affection 
of those with whom he had been associated, many of them, too, 
the ablest and most eminent persons in the nation. 

But our purpose is to refer only to Blanco White's literary 
character. There are in this book some small poems of White's 
which, in our judgment, are among the most genuine and beau- 
tiful that we have ever met with from the pen of one not pro- 
fessionally a poet. Of the following, Coleridge, in a letter to 
the author, says, that it is " the finest and most grandly con- 
ceived sonnet in our language: at least," he adds, "it is only in 
Milton's and in Wordsworth's sonnets that I recollect any rival 
to it ; and this is not my judgment alone, but that of the man, 
x,a.i'' stoxn^ ^aox,a%ov, John Hookham Frere." To us, it appears 
to be conceived in the temper of that profoundly meditative 
sentiment which we meet with only in the Greek anthology, and 
to be expressed with the sensuous richness of true poetry. It 
is a sublime composition. 

SONNET ON NIGHT AND DEATH. 

Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 

Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name, 

Did he not tremble for this lovely frame. 
This glorious canopy of light and blue? 
Yet 'ueath a curtain of translucent dew, 

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 

Hesperus with the host of Heaven came, 
And lo ! creation widened in man's view. 
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 

Within thy beams, Oh sun ? or who could find. 
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed. 

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? 
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? 

Another sonnet, " On hearing myself for the first time 
called an old man ; setat. 50," is singularly truthful and 
touching : 



152 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 23. 

Ages have rolled within my breast, though yet 
Not nigh the bourn to fleeting man assigned : 
Yes : old ! alas, how spent the struggling mind 

Which, at the noon of life, is fain to set! 

My dawn and eyening have so closely met, 
That men the shades of night begin to find 
Darkening my brow ; and heedless, not unkind, 

Let the sad warning drop, without regret. 

Gone youth ! had I thus missed thee, nor a hope 

Were left of thy return beyond the tomb, 
I could curse life : but glorious is the scope 

Of an immortal soul. Oh death, thy gloom. 

Short, and already tinged with coming light. 

Is to the Christian but a summer's night. 

Poor Blanco 1 ere the shadows of that night gathered about 
him, he had reasoned himself out of all belief in a dawn beyond 
the darkness. 

These exquisite couplets, entitled "A thought suggested by 
the custom of writing a few lines to be kept as a memorial 
of the writer," flow from the deep fountains of thoughtful 
feeling. 

Mysterious Lines ! the heart is loth to tell 
The gloomy sources of your wonted spell. 
Absence and Death, these are the magic springs 
That turn to treasures e'en such worthless things. 
But why complain ? The softness that pervades 
Man's truest virtues, springs beneath death's shades. 
'Tis sorrow tempers joy's too dangerous glare; 
Too proud would be the eye ne'er moistened by a tear. 

There are some delightful letters from Southey in these 
volumes; learned, playful, ardent, "full of matter," as th( 
Laureate was ever wont to be ; some from Coleridge, more 
respectful and to the point, than was usual with that quaint 
enthusiast, and a copious correspondence with Dr. Channing. 
In a letter of the latter to Mr. Thom, after the death of Blanco 
White, we find this beautiful thought: — "I have sometimes 
observed on the beach, which I am in the habit of visiting, a 
solemn unceasing undertone, quite distinct from the dashings of 
the separate successive waves ; and so in certain minds, I ob- 



^lAT. 29.] SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. 153 

serve a deep undertone of trnth, even when they express par- 
ticular views which seem to me discordant and false. I had 
always tliis feeling about Mr. White. I could not always agree 
with him, but I felt that he never lost his grasp of the greatest 
truths." 



Miscellaneous Sermons. By the Rev. Sydney Smith. 

If the dignity of any mental quality were to be judged by 
the greatness and splendor of the faculties with which it is com- 
monly found in company, humor would probably be ranked as 
one, the loftiest and least earthly, of our intellectual character- 
istics. It is the almost inseparable associate of genius, as wit 
is the usual attendant of talent : nay, in its finest essence, as in 
the instances of Cervantes, Rabelais, Sterne, and Hood, it well 
nigh constitutes, in itself, an inspiration. It is equally often 
seen in combination with strong sense and piercing logic. It is 
allied to pathetic sentiment ; it mingles naturally and gracefully 
with the deepest feeling : it is akin to noble principle, and the 
sincerest virtue. It is as kindly, and affectionate, and good, as 
wit is sarcastic, and cynical, and bitter. Nor are these circum- 
stances at all extraordinary : for humor is nothing more than 
the gay and cheerful outflow of that genial sympathy with the 
character of humanity, and the course of nature, which, when it 
acts creatively, gives into life the noblest conceptions of art ; 
when it proceeds reflectively, evinces all the power of practical 
reason ; and when it indulges its instincts in moral and social 
speculation, is one with love and truth. "We challenge any man 
to go through the writings of Sydney Smith — where he will 
find more right feeling, common sense, and useful reflection, 
than in any hundred grave writers, — and say that we have spoken 
too highly of that which seems to be the source, support, and 
strength, of all his excellence. 

Humor was, in truth, the guardian spirit of Sydney Smith. 
He was a whig ; but with none of " the virulence and male- 
volence of his party." He was a low-churchman ; but he felt 



154 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

too practically to lend Ms aid to subvert a church system which, 
created by experience, finds its justification in the ordinary 
workings of men's thoughts and tempers. He was a theorist, 
an "economist, and a calculator;" but the healthful affinity of 
his feelings for the truth of the actual and real, kept him safe 
from the perversion and hardness of that poor profession. We 
love Sydney Smith : nay, we doubt whether any man can read 
the fragment on the Irish Church, with which this volume con- 
cludes, without feeling for the author of it a respect partaking 
of veneration. He was a sound, and honest, and sincere man ; 
and labored with a gay heart, but a steady purpose, for the ad- 
vancement of those interests which he deemed important to his 
fellows. He saw what was true ; he admired what was beau- 
tiful; he followed what was good. The merit of him who 
employs his energies in correcting "the little, nameless, unre- 
membered" faults and wrongs of society, addresses itself to our 
sympathies, as far more genuine and respectable, than that of 
him whose sounding efforts are directed to the emancipation 
of races, and the civilization of savage continents. A philan- 
thropist of the reason, and not of the imagination, he discovered 
the illusions of virtue as shrewdly as he laid bare the impostures 
of vice. He concerned himself with those matters which are 
nearest and most constant, and least observed in their action, 
and which, on those accounts, are most effective in their influ- 
ence upon rational and social character. The self-deceptions 
of a specious piety — the excesses of fanaticism — the errors of an 
irrational and vain philanthropy — these were the subjects of his 
critical exposure, not more than the removal of prejudice, and 
the abatement of social abuses, was the effort of his amending 
hand. 

We heartily wish that there were more sermons of modern 
times, like these of Sydney Smith. The preachers of this day 
display an utter ignorance of the constitution of that human 
nature which it is their duty, first to know, and then to elevate. 
They overlook the truth that, in regard to sensitive and intelli- 
gent beings, moral suasion must ever be the true and greatest 
engine of control and effect. They begin by insulting the 



^TAT. 29.] SYDNEY SMITH'S SERMONS. 155 

understanding, which they propose to convince : they proceed 
by wakening and exasperating every dormant prejudice, which 
they ought to have charmed into deep repose : and they end 
with leaving those errors, which they attack by so mad a 
strategy, entrenched in pride, and fortified by passion. Their 
theology is of unimpeachable orthodoxy ; but all the moisture 
of human sympathy is evaporated out of it. They distinguish 
subtlety ; they argue irresistibly ; they fulminate magnificently ; 
but they never condescend to attract, allure, and win. The 
consequence is, that while the air is filled' with the strife of 
tongues, and the city is set on fire with the rivalries of religions, 
that celestial presence which is the inner soul of all religion — 
that spirit which " vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not 
behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, rejoiceth not in 
iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things" — has fled away from us to the 
mountains, and to the vallies, and to the ends of the earth. Far 
different is the course pursued by the prebendary of St. Paul's. 
He sets out by conciliating all our sympathies, and lulling all 
our animosities against his cause ; he goes on through a rich, 
delightful course of moral reflection, till at last he has made all 
our natural tastes and inclinations in love with spiritual truth. 
He sets up a practical standard ; he brings men to it by at- 
tracting their feelings, and keeps them there by satisfying their 
judgments. To the honest and good heart, which, like Naaman, 
the Syrian, craves some indulgence to the force of circumstances, 
and the necessities of its position, he says, with the indulgent 
wisdom of the prophet, "Go in peace." In dealing with the 
sins of frailty and weakness, he ever proscribes the fault without 
condemning the person, by administering exhortation, not re- 
proof — " Go, and sin no more." He accomplishes more than 
others, because he does not attempt as much. 



156 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [iEiAT. 29. 

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By Thomas Carlyle. 

Mr. Caulyle's Essays and Reviewals, of which this is the 
first complete publication, appear to us to be the most valuable 
and agreeable of all his writings. They touch a great variety 
of important topics, are well and carefully considered, and are 
better adapted than the longer and formal treatises which he 
has of late produced, to the particular character of his powers, 
which we take to be critical and suggestive, rather than con- 
structive and systematic. Mr. Carlyle has been variously esti- 
mated, according to the predispositions of those who have 
judged. Excellence, when it appears in a novel shape, is some- 
times estimated below, often much above, its merit ; rarely 
according to its desert. The natural eye, we know, is deceived 
as to the distances and magnitudes of objects, when it cannot 
compare them with other familiar objects ; and the mind is still 
more prone to misconceive the proportions of those things 
which it cannot refer to some wonted form. So it has fared 
with Mr. Carlyle : he has been unjustly condemned, and he has 
been extravagantly praised. Not that we think he has been, 
upon the whole, too highly estimated by any class, were their 
applauses somewhat more discriminating. We should be glad 
to believe that there were any persons, amidst the mob of talkers 
about Carlyle, who were capable of valuing to excess the excel- 
lencies which he unquestionably possesses. His peculiarities 
they esteem too flatteringly ; his greatness they scarcely ap- 
preciate at all. For ourselves, we cannot give him the rank of a 
first-rate intellect ; we cannot approve his writings as a whole ; 
but we admire many of his qualities as brilliant and admirable, 
and we think him possessed of some capacities which are as rare 
as they are excellent. 

One of the most striking peculiarities of Mr. Carlyle's cha- 
racter, is his intolerance of cant in every shape ; whether it be 
the traditionary cant of moral and political principle, "or the 
cant of the most enlightened opinion of the time ; the cant of the 
nation, or the cant of a noisy sect; the dogmatizing cant of the 
age, or the flippant cant of the hour. Now, undoubtedly, an 



Mtat. 29.] CARLTLE'S ESSAYS. 15Y 

infinite deal of sense is in solution with all these kinds of cant, 
and in unsettling or dissipating the strength or weakness of any- 
one of them, the defences of truth in its fastnesses, or the sup- 
ports of truth in its open marches, are to some extent enfeebled. 
Still it is of incalculable value to every reader to have before 
him an example of a writer who is laboring only to judge sincere 
judgments ; who brings the conscience of his intellect, not its 
prejudices or affections, to investigate everything, in its search 
after truth. The influence of such an example is of salutary 
moral tone, and it invigorates and strengthens the intellectual 
temper. 

Mr. Carlyle belongs, undoubtedly, to the skeptical school : 
his mind is naturally fertile of " obstinate questionings" of every- 
thing. But he does not make his sword his worship ; he does 
not mistake the method for the end. His object is truth and 
its repose: the means he employs are skepticism and its dis- 
orders. He obviously is endeavoring to work through the con- 
fusions of opinion, and hy them, to a higher region of light and 
peace. Looking beyond the excitement and bustle which occupy 
the foreground of his mind, you clearly see the reposing figures 
of those great sentiments and sympathies that are akin to the 
eternity of changeless truth. In this respect, there is a very 
agreeable difference between himself and Mr. Macauley. The 
latter seems to think criticism, not progression, to be the chief 
end and final cause of all intellectual effort. Like the captain 
in Farquhai*, to him, " Fighting for fighting's sake's sufficient 
cause." Mr. Carlyle is a traveller by profession : he is a fighter 
only by necessity. He carries a staff as well as a sword, and 
under his armor is the scallop shell of the pilgrim : he attacks 
no enemies but those that block up his march upon the high road 
to the hilled city, which he sees far before him ; and if he lays 
about him manfully at times with his blade, it is only to occupy 
the ground with his advancing steps. 

We take him to be a writer whose true function is, not to 
guide, instruct, or satisfy, but to rouse, and prompt, and stimu- 
late. A strong man will be infi utely the better for reading 
him ; a weak one might possibly be injured. His writings are 
U 



158 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat, 29. 

like a glass of spirits : a stout man can work better and steadier 
after it ; a feeble one is only intoxicated. There is a fearless- 
ness, and force, and fire about him, from which a noble inspira- 
tion may be caught ; but, then, there must be vigor and head to 
turn that inspiration to account. There is an ardor about him 
that communicates to the reader the flame of its own earnestness. 
We come from him refreshed, and stirred, and charged with 
enthusiasm. He may have many errors, but he has much sense ; 
and a great intellect, when it goes wrong, benefits us more than 
a little one when it accidentally goes right. The faults of 
genius are full of good. 



Sketches op Modern Literature, and Eminent Literary Men: Being a 
Gallery of Literary Portraits. By George Gilfillan. 

This production is all light and no shade. It is not the 
brilliance of a stai'ry sky, but the unmitigated glare of a gas 
chandelier. It has not the fresh odorousness of the air blowing 
over rose-gardens, but the oppressive fragrance of a close and 
heated room, filled with flowers of the tuberous plant. Hesiod's 
maxim, that the half is more than the whole, is as true in litera 
ture as it is in morals, and even more important to be observed. 
On opening the book, we are saluted with a shower of wit-arrows, 
which occasion some little alarm, until, like Richard in his inter- 
view with Saladin in the desert, we catch one or two of them in 
our hand, for closer inspection, and discover that they have no 
heads — being merely light bits of wood, cut and painted to look 
like arrows. We have no respect for such writers. Such a style 
is not only a vice in taste, but it argues some grievous wants in 
respect both of intellectual and moral greatness. Those lofty 
and comprehensive intelligences, whose mental consciousness is 
in sympathy with the great spirit of truth, reduce the elements 
of thought to a few general principles, examine and judge with 
an apparent uniformity of reflection, and seem often to repeat 
themselves. The hrilliant point of view of every object, and 



^TAT. 29.] GILFILLAN'S LITEr.ARY PORTRAITS. I59 

of every side of every- object, cannot be reached but by one wlio 
has cut loose from those liens which consistency lays upon all 
the liege men of truth ; and the refracted light under which a 
thing looks brilliant, is so opposite to the plain white light in 
which it is seen as it is, that a love of point and glitter, if it does 
not begin in insensibility to truth, will almost invariably end in 
leaving a man in that condition. There was a great deal of 
psychological profoundness in the remark of Charles Lamb about 
Hazlitt, of whom the present writer has frequently reminded us. 
Commending him one day, to an extent that called forth some 
expression of surprise from his companion, Lamb added, by way 
of gentle qualification, as if he had supposed his hearer would 
have taken that for granted : " It is true the man does not know 
the difference between right and wrong." 

We never love to condemn anything having the port and 
countenance of a book, unless it be morally bad. We cannot 
charge any higher crime upon Mr. Gilfillan's performance, than 
being worthless, and that, as the modern world goes, may, per- 
haps, be negatively a virtue. A judicious prince, says Machia- 
velli, will from time to time, commit acts of wanton cruelty, that 
his subjects may appreciate how much they are indebted to him 
for not being constantly wanton and cruel. There have been, 
of late times, so many pernicious publications, that we have come 
to consider an author as somewhat commendable, who neither 
springs a mine under religion, denies the first principles of social 
and political order, nor melts down virtue in the fire of the 
passions. We shall, therefore, decline passing any sentence on 
Mr. Gilfillan, considering that he does not fall within that class 
whose discharge, according to the Edinburgh's maxim, is the 
condemnation of the judge. We shall be content with saying, 
that the best thing about this book, is the articles of De Quincy, 
the- SOI disant opium eater, to which it has given rise in Tait's 
Edinburgh Magazine. 



160 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

An Author's Mind. A Bookfull op Books, or Thirty Books in One. 
Edited by Martin Farquhar Tupper, Esq., M. A., &c. 

. Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper is one of those gentlemen 
of acknowledged genius, and sovereign popularity, whose merits, 
however, we have never been able to discover. If oddity were 
always originality, if quaintness and beauty were synonymous, 
if paradox were necessarily wisdom, we should be ready to grant 
that Mr. Tupper is a wise, beautiful and original thinker. But 
thought, after all, is an affair of mind, and though a man of 
genius may write what is far more brilliant than common sense 
ever is, yet no man can utter valuable truths on moral and pru- 
dential subjects, unless he possesses a vigorous and powerful 
understanding. Now Mr. Tupper's art consists in contriving, 
not thoughts, but things that look like thoughts ; fancies, in imi- 
tation of truths. The "Proverbial Philosophy," in fact, appears 
to us to be one of the most curious impostures we have ever met 
with. When you first read one of the aphorisms, it strikes you 
as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom. But look more closely 
at it ; try to apply it ; and you will find that it is merely a trick 
of words. What flashed upon you as a profound distinction in 
morals, turns out to be nothing but a verbal antithesis. What 
was paraded, as a kind of transcendental analogy between things 
not before suspected of resemblance, discovered by the "spiritual 
insight" of the moral seer, is in fact no more than a grave 
clench, — a solemn quibble, — a conceit arising not from the per- 
fection of mind, but the imperfection of language. Those con- 
ceptions, fabricated by Fancy out of the materials that Fancy 
deals in, and colored by the ray of a poetic sentiment, bear the 
same relation to truths, that the prismatic hues of the spray of 
a fountain in the sunshine bear to the gems which they perhajjs 
oatshine. It dazzles and delights, but if we try to apprehend 
it we become bewildered ; and finally discover that we were de- 
ceived by a brilliant phantom of air. You may admire Mr. 
Tupper; you may enjoy him; but you cannot understand him: 
the staple of his sentences is not stuff of the understanding. 
Take one of Mr. Tupper's and one of Lord Bacon's aphorisms. 



.Etat. 30.] MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER. 161 

They flash with an equal bravery. But try them upon the 
glassy surface of life. Bacon's cuts it as if it were air : Tupper's 
turns into a little drop of dirty water. One was a diampnd, 
the other but an icicle ; one was the commonest liquor, artifi- 
cially refrigerated ; the other was a crystal in form, but in its 
substance the pure carbon of truth. If these bright delusions 
which Mr. Tupper turns out to the wonder and praise of his 
admirers, were really tJwughts, is it to be supposed that he 
could go on in this way, stringing them together, or evolving 
one out of the other, as a spider weaves its unending line, or as 
a boy blows soap bubbles from the nose of a tobacco pipe ? 
Fancies, conceits, intellectual phantoms, may be engendered out 
of the mind, brooding in self-creation upon its own suggestions : 
but truth is to be mined from Nature, to be wTung from expe- 
rience, to be seized as the victor's trophy on the battle-field 
of action and suffering. The flowers of poetry may bud spon- 
taneously around the meditative spirit of genius, but the harvest 
of Truth, though to be reaped by mind, must grow out of 
Reality. 

Having thus signalized our incapacity to appreciate the value 
of Mr. Tupper's productions, we need hardly be at the trouble 
of expressing our opinions of the particular work now before 
us, as all who admire the author would at once challenge us as 
incompetent to criticise it. To those who value Mr. Tupper, 
we can say with an honest conscience, that we think this volume 
quite equal to any that have gone before it, from the same 
quarter. Though we cannot discover what relation these "title- 
pages" bear to common sense, we have no doubt of their being 
equally valuable with the Proverbs ; and though we have tried 
in vain to divine the motive of the author, in this "bookfull of 
books," we are satisfied that the purpose of the volume is quite 
as rational as that of any previous production of this singular 
writer. 

14* 



162 . LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

RuBio's Rambles is the United States, and in Canada, during the 
Summer of 1845. 

This work is one of those ill-advised productions of a bigoted, 
self-sufficient individual, who, having formed in his own obscure 
and circumscribed sphere, opinions of perfection, founded upon 
the satisfaction of his personal wants and conveniences, ridicules 
when only glanced at, and abuses when participated in by him- 
self, every custom differing, in the minutest particular, from his 
self-created standard of excellence. 

Rubio is a man who would condemn a whole nation because 
he found tough beef-steaks in the country, and because dinners 
were not served up after the "manner at home." How unfor- 
tunate it has been for the kindlier sentiments existing between 
this country and Great Britain, that men like Hamilton, Dickens 
and this author, should come here, and, because the English 
language is spoken, refuse to us the courtesies that are never 
withheld to any nation differing from them in that respect ! The 
foundation of half the abuse and misrepresentation manifested 
towards us, arises from the absurd first principle of the majority 
of visitors to this country from England ; they have the pre- 
sumption to assume us to be English, and then to judge us by 
their own self-created standards of excellence, rating us soundly 
for every circumstance in which we differ from them. This is 
not the manner in which a philosophical mind would view us, 
or our institutions : we are as much a foreign nation towards 
England, as is France, or Germany : separated from Great 
Britain for seventy years, our manner's and customs do not differ 
so much from theirs, as their own vary in the present time from 
what they were then. Thus we have individuals arriving in 
New York, without letters of introduction, without knowledge 
of localities — without even consulting a fellow-passenger — plung- 
ing, at once, like this book-maker, into a cheap l)oarding-hoase — 
where they find breakfast at six o'clock ! and dinner at twelve ! 
and their opinions of the manners and customs of our country 
are founded upon this sage experience. This first friendly im- 
pression is vented by Eubio in the following ludicrous attempt : 



JEtat. 29.] RAMBLES IN THE UNITED STATES. 163 

" The Americans are truly a vulgar, ignorant, bragging, spitting, melancholy, 
sickly people. Passing their lives in a high state of mental excitement, some 
kill themselves with drink, and some with tobacco; some are hurried to the 
ever yawning gates of their cemeteries by excesses in religion, or excesses in 
politics, excesses in commerce or excesses in speculation, or tribulation of mind 
induced by a combination of these causes. But calamity is not of very long 
life in America, for the men are soon dead, and soon forgotten. Duels and 
assassinations also help to thin their ranks ; for strange as it may appear, it can 
be proved that famous as Italy, Sicily, and Spain, are for the stiletto, there 
are many more assassinations and stabbings in the slave States of America, 
than in all those countries put together. This is a melancholy truth ; but, as 
the minds of the masters in the Southern States insensibly become degraded 
by the mere contact, not to say association, with beings so degraded as their 
slaves, the moral sense becomes blunted, they care little for assassination or 
for murder, and nothing for stabbing and maiming." 

Thus we see a man forming, ad captandum, such opinions of 
a nation, on his first arrival in the country — seeking only to 
confirm the unjust and injurious sentiments he has conceived of a 
whole people unknown to him, and from whom he afterwards 
says he had " received constant civilities ;" putting his prejudices 
and calumnies in print, to insult and goad a country naturally 
and proudly sensitive, where every man becomes an active par- 
ticipator in, and guardian of, the government of the land. 

Rubio — whom we take to be some growling, half-pay British 
officer, of fifty or sixty years of age — misses, undoubtedly, in 
country hotels, the "mess table" of his regiment; and founds 
much of his indignation against us upon our barbarous toleration 
of bad cooks. He says the "castor department" of our tables 
is " the filthiest compound of nastiness that was ever exhibited 
to the disgust of an Englishman" — that he was constantly dis- 
gusted by persons jumping up from the table before a decent 
man could eat one plateful of his meat, and in truth, all the 
worst habits of the less particular portions of the people are 
exaggerated to the veriest absurdity, and fixed upon all grades 
of society as the universal customs of the nation, and one unjust, 
false, sweeping, and virulent condemnation is the result. Our 
readers will not, we hope, suppose that we intend to flatter the 
faults or foibles of our countrymen ; we know that no people on 
earth are without them ; but we do place our stamp of utter 



164 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [iErAT. 24. 

(li8api)robation upon tlie individual of any nation who prostitutes 
his pen to the base and degraded purpose of fostering injustice 
and prejudice by a sweeping and false condemnation of a whole 
people. In this instance even the apology of ignorance and 
misinformation, can plead no excuse for ^e writer — for every 
man, however much he may be capable of a malignant action, 
is quite aware of the vileness and infamy of the act he per- 
petrates. 

We are not pleased at the re-publication of these works ; they 
fester wounds that should be permitted to heal, and sow dissen- 
sions between nations that should be friends. At the same time 
that we make this remark, we cannot but express an earnest hope 
that we may live to see the day when Americans shall mentally 
acknowledge a conscientious standard of their own, and learn to 
treat with laughter and contempt, the petty attacks made through 
ignorance or envy of our institutions, and fear at our increasing 
power and commanding position. 



Undine: A Romance. By the Baron de la Motte FonQtiE. 

[The "wild, graceful, and touching Undine," to use the felicitous epithets 
of Mrs. Austen, has had the good fortune to unite the applauses of several of 
the finest and most fastidious judges of high excellence in Art, that England 
and Germany have produced. "It will always continue," says Monzel, "one 
of the most delightful creations of German poetry." "If you would have a 
good opinion of Fouquo," said Goethe, "read his Undine, which is really a 
most charming story." " Undine," said the late S. T. Coleridge, " is a most 
exquisite work. It shows the general want of any sense for the fine and the 
subtle in the public taste, that this romance made no deep impression. Un- 
dine's character before she receives a soul, is marvellously beautiful." "Mr. 
Coleridge's admiration of this little romance," adds his nephew Henry Taylor, 
"was unbounded. He read it several times in German, and once in the English 
translation. He said there was something in Undine oven beyond Scott; — that 
Scott's best characters and conceptions were composed, by which I understood 
him to moan that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of odd par- 
ticulars, and received its individuality from the author's power of fusion, being 
in the result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was said to be the 
conflux of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was one and single in 
projection, and had presented to his imagination, what Scott had never done, 



^TAT. 24.] UNDINE. Ig5 

an absolutely new idea." Sir Walter himself has also expressed his hearty- 
admiration of the work. "Fouque's Undine or Naide," said he, "is ravishing. 
The sufTeriug of the heroine is real, though it is the suffering of a fantastic 
being." 

The author of this work, Friedrich, Baron de la Motte Fouque, was born at 
New Brandenburg, February 12th, 1777. His grandfather, a Protestant, and 
belonging to one of the most ancient families of Normandy, took refuge at the 
Hague upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Henry Augustus, Baron de la 
Motte Fouque, so distinguished for his military bravery and skill during the 
v/ars of Frederic the Great, and whose correspondence with Frederic is con- 
tained in the first volume of the works of that monarch, was the uncle of the 
subject of this notiee, who published his life at Berlin, in 1S25. A Protestant, 
and the descendant of Protestants, the character of the author of Undine 
seemed to embody a complete reaction against all that was revolutionary and 
progressive in social and political feeling. Doubtful of the result at which the 
troubled stream of modern civility was likely to arrive, his sympathies started 
back to the shadows of its source, and sought in a dreamy revival of the senti- 
ments and fiincies of the middle ages, at once the antagonist and the substitute 
of modern passion. His career seems to have realized in a remarkable degree, 
that ideal life with which he loved to invest his imagination ; and to have 
illustrated that union of daring energy and active valor with refined emotions 
and high intellectual culture, which is popularly associated with the old knights 
of romance. He served as lieutenant in the Prussian horseguards against the 
French in the campaigns on the Rhine in 179-4 and 1795. After this, he spent 
many years in literary retirement, engaged in study, and in the composition 
of a great variety of romances, and tales, and poems. In 1813, when Prussia 
rose as one man against Napoleon, in the rage of the justest retribution that 
ever yet trampled the destroyer to the earth, Fouqug again entered the service ; 
but in his mind, even the enthusiasm that urged the charges of Lutzen and 
Leipsig seems to have been animated rather by visions of long-past national 
ideas which to his eye were mingling in the contest, than by the passions and 
interests of the passing hour. He entered the army as a captain, and had at- 
tained the rank of major, when he retired at the close of the campaign. The 
remainder of his life was past at or near Berlin in the quiet of literary occu- 
pation. Among other honors, he was a Knight of the Order of St. John. He 
enjoyed the cordial and intimate friendship of the present king of Prussia. He 
died at Berlin, on the 23d of January, 1843. He was thrice married, and left 
a daughter and two sons. 

In Germany, where the vintages of wit are as sedulously discriminated and 
labelled as those of wine, Fouqug's writings are referred to the school of Ro- 
manticism, — a class who sought to revive in their writings the mysticism of 
aboriginal fiction, to restore the picturesque manners of feudal times, and call 
again to the scene of art the shadowy forms of northern mythology. But of all 
this school, Fouque is the only one who has succeeded in bringing up this 
local and temporary feeling to the level of European intelligence and taste; 
and that, indeed, only in Undine : for while Treck, Herder and Novalis never 



166 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 24. 

became even national, this fine and graceful creation of Fouque has excited the 
warm and abiding admiration of the first minds in England and America. It has 
been translated into almost every European language, and a version has even been 
made in Russian hexameters. " The Hero of the North," a dramatic tirlogy, con- 
sisting of •' Sigurd the Serpent-Killer," " Sigurd's Revenge," and "Aslauga," and 
founded on an ancient Scandinavian legend, is one of the most elaborate of his 
re-constructions. " The Magic Ring" is a tale of feudal adventures mixed up 
with enchantment, contrived with singular complication and skill. " Sintram 
and his Companions" is a tale of higher power, and of a more earnest simplicity 
and concentration. He has written a number of other tales, distinguished for 
Bimilar characteristics of high-wrought fancy, solemn enthusiasm, and pic- 
turesque brilliance. Among his poetical works, one on occasion of the murder 
of Kotzebue by George Sand, and another on the death of Major Von Roder, 
who fell at Culm, and others referring to incidents during the war, have been 
admired for their fervor and boldness. His select works, in twelve volumes, 
with his last corrections, were published about the year ISil, under his own 
superintendence at Halle. — Ed.] 



Fairest among the forms that come smiling towards us as we 
enter the garden of literature, is Undine, the Water-Nymph. 
Grace is in all her motions, and in her aspect are celestial 
witcheries. Pure as dew, and soft as a gush of distant music, — 
gentle as a star beaming through the riven clouds, — with mys- 
tery of charms, she comes near to us, and melts down our admi- 
ration into love ; but when we would take her to us as something 
familiiir and delicious, she floats away to the far heights of Fame, 
and looks down on our despair with countenance of pearl-like 
lustre, and smile as sweet as Spring. Divine in its essence, 
eternal through beauty, this marvellous effluence of genius, — 
perfect, without precedent and beyond 'pursuit, — has taken its 
place among the perpetuities of Art, one of the contributions 
which the mind of man has made to the enduring things 
of life. 

If we were asked to select, at once for comparison and con- 
trast with some bright work of Grecian art, a specimen of 
Romantic composition, which, while it illustrated even to ex- 
treme all the quaint and wild peculiarities of the Teutonic style, 
should vindicate its inherent truth and justness, our choice would 
probably fall upon this beautiful production. The stuff out 
of which the tale is wrought is thoroughly Gothic; nay, the 



.Etat. 24.] UNDINE. Igf 

whole material — thought, feeling, fancy, — is very German of the 
Germans. Yet the execution of the work is so simple — so clear 
of every national or local refraction of taste, of all conven- 
tionalisms of tone, and mannerisms of impression — so pervaded 
by the breadth, sincerity and directness of genuine excellence — 
that in so delightful a result, Pericles himself might tolerate the 
miracle of modern art. If the classic gem paled even the lights 
of Nature by the intense and single ray of its far perfection, the 
modern picture would be found to display a variety of forms, a 
versatility of effects, and a richness of hue, to which the narrow 
faultlessness of its rival would be a stranger. Opposite in cha- 
racter, yet equal in impression, the master-works of the two 
schools might stand over one against the other, like the two 
gates of the day of European civility ; one gleaming with the 
clear, cold holiness of the pale and starry morning ; the other 
aglow with all the fiery, tumultuous tints of a gorgeous sunset. 
In scenic attitude, with marble grace, in statuesque distinctness, 
the offspring of the Grecian mind stands solitary and unsympa- 
thizing, conscious of sovereignty. The child of the Gothic soul, 
warm with the life of passion, and blushing with its tenderest 
hues, flies to our kindled bosom and seems to become a portion 
of ourselves. Majestic, unconciliating, unresistible, the one 
compels our homage ; the dazzle and turbulence of the other's 
charms captivate our fancy before reason can act, and our 
judgment is floated away upon a tide of feelings. That is a 
stainless virgin, whose sanctity of chasteness reproves the admi- 
ration which it raises, and refuses to be approved except by 
principle : iJxis, soft and condescending, fascinates even where it is 
frailest, and for every fault it shows, we have more than a weak- 
ness. If our duty is to the one, our delight is with the other. 

In the compass of continental literature, we do not remember 
an instance whereby so slight a design, an effect so definite, 
complete and strong is brought out, or where, in so small a com- 
pass, such profusion of gifts — such lavish wealth of powers, — is 
displayed, as in this curious and exquisite work. Invention, 
poetry, humor, wit, truth, terror, — the wild, the weird, — the 
gay, the graceful and the grand — are blent together with inter- 



168 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 24. 

fusion, yet distinctness and harmony, of the colors of a forest in 
autumn. Most of the finest, and some of the highest capacities 
which the exigencies of Art can call for, here come into play. 
A fancy, at once delicate and imperious, — which at one moment 
sports with frolic graces and, in the next, can accumulate all the 
clouds of wonder, — which, in dealing with the terrible, knows 
how to exclude the disgusting : sentiment, deep, soft, and 
brilliant as the dye of the rose-leaf: the feeling wisdom of a 
heart schooled in the stern love of suffering and disappointment : 
a pathos, pure, true, not always saved from pain : the energy 
of thought and the fire of passion. If some fantastic quip of 
humor suggests to us that we toy with a plaything, instantly a 
thrill of awe makes us feel that we are under the mastery of a po- 
tent magician. We raise our eyes from tracing a merry gambol 
at our feet, and behold ! from the summit of some grand image of 
the mind, shapes of terror and mystery are looking down upon us. 
The comparison of the Knight, by Undine, to the summer, which 
"amidst the highest splendor, puts on the flaming and thundering 
crown of glorious tempests," has the sublimity of Milton. The 
author possesses in an eminent degree that eye of composition. — • 
that power of gi'ouping several figures in the wholeness of a 
single impression, which makes the narrative expand from time 
to time into tableaux of startling vividness ; a faculty which, 
though not one of the highest capacities of the artist, and though 
often existing in the absence of most other valuable qualities, 
yet, when judiciously employed, contributes to very striking 
effects. 

It must not be supposed, however, that these differing cha- 
racteristics are thrown together in a jumble, or wrought into a 
grotesque arrangement which produces novelty at the expense 
of propriety, and surprises without imparting any rational 
pleasure. In the mind of La Motte Fouque, the taste for the 
quaint is always subordinate to the love of the beautiful, and in 
the wildest of his swallow-like flights he ever follows the line 
of grace. In truth, the skill with which the varied elements 
of beauty and wonder are combined and made harmonious in the 
completeness of a splendid poetical creation, is not less extra- 



^TAT. 24.] UNDINE. ](;q 

ordinary than the versatility of invention by which such matcrial.s 
were contrived and brought together. 

In no part of this remarkable work is that instinctive fineness 
of contrivance which always attends the highest genius, more 
strikingly shown than in the delicate mastery with which the 
natural and ideal characters are assimilated to one another, and 
the real and fabulous portions of the tale so fused, as it were, 
together, that, without losing the distinctness of their several 
natures, they are brought under the unity of a single agency. 
The different parts are not w7^ought into a constrained connection, 
but cast, by the creative fire of imagination, into the entireness 
of a homogenous conception. In this respect, even " Shakspeare's 
magic," uucopyable as its grace and boldness may have been, is 
somewhat at fault. In " The Tempest," the visionary essence of 
Ariel sorts well enough with the highly-thoughted, passionate 
romance of Ferdinand and Amanda, and the bizarre humors of 
Stephano and Trinculo are perhaps sufficiently in tune with the 
grotesque being of Caliban ; but the intrusion of the quotidian and 
familiar characters and conversation of Gonzalo, and Sebastian, 
and Antonio, stops the circuit of enchantment, and breaks the 
charm of art. In the present case, the eflTect which we have 
alluded to seems to have been attained by bringing the super- 
natural characters, on the one hand, as near to humanity as could 
be done without impairing the perfectness of their own peculiar 
being, and, on the other, by laying the real persons under a 
species of enchantment, — involving them in the mazes of a 
strange and mournful fate — which makes them to our eye well- 
nigh as weird and fearful as the higher and more mystic agents 
of the tale. This bewitchment, or pervasive and overpowering 
influence of destiny, is felt at once so strongly by the reader, 
that the author has not been at the pains to express it. The 
generous and impulsive nature of Huldbrand triumphs over it 
at intervals just enough to give expansion and variety to the 
action which is to work out the sad history of Undine. Its 
existence should be borne in mind in looking at the character 
of Bertalda, which without such reference might seem to lack 
the full proportions of womanly passion ; as being, in the cir' 
15 



170 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 24. 

cumstances of her position, not fierce enough to be feminine. 
This inaportant assimilation of the two kinds of characters that 
figure on the story is aided by a discreet use of the power of 
illusion, on the employment of which the fame of Mrs. Rad- 
clifif is founded. Thus, the Eaiight, at his first entrance upon 
the scene, is invested through the terrors of the fisherman, with 
certain supernatural circumstances, the halo of which does not 
wholly fade for us to the very end of the story ; and the 
old fisherman himself, in that striking scene where he stretches 
his arms wide over the current and nods so as to make his white 
hairs fall over his forehead, seems to be so identified with the 
marvellous inhabitants of the forest, that, to the last, in our feel- 
ings, he occupies a half-way position between men and spirits. 
Add to this the adoption of a highly poetic style of language 
and illustration, which of itself informs the natural world with a 
degree of life and sentiment, and gently raises us on the wings 
of metaphor into the region of spirit ; and the employment of a 
half-comic and mocking tone of narrative which disarms the in- 
credulity of the reader, and causes him to believe all by making 
him feel that he need not believe anything. Of these effects every 
reader will be sensible, and it will be the pleasure of each to 
analyze them according to his skill ; but for a single illustration 
of the exquisite preparation by which the specious miracles of 
the author's genius are introduced, and the delicate gradations 
of power by which fancy leads us on, from the familiar delusions 
of sentiment, through the natural magic of excited passion, till 
we come at last into the very courts of the marvellous and to all 
the revelry of fiction, we may refer to the opening parts of the 
tale. At the very commencement, the leading notion of the 
water and earth being animated by affections and moved by a 
human spirit, is lodged in our mind by merely the use of such 
figurative language as forms one of the commonplaces of poetry ; 
and a little further on, the image of a snow-white gigantic man 
rising out of the water is familiarized to our feelings by our being 
given to understand, on its first appearance, that it is only an 
illusion of the fisherman's terror, — "a strange mistake into which 
his imagination had betrayed him." So, too, the apparition at 



TEtat. 24.] UNDINR. lYl 

tlie window during the marriage of Undine, which contributes 
so powerfully to the interest of the event, has been foreshadowed, 
in some sort, and thereby divested of its first honor by a similar 
shape : having been made to pass across the spectrum of the 
mind's eye of the shuddering Knight, as Undine, towards the 
close of the first chapter, begs him to narrate his adventures in 
the forest ; " he looked towards the window, for it seemed to 
him, that one of the strange shapes, which had come upon him 
in the forest, must be there grinning in through the glass ; but 
he discerned nothing." These considerations might by some be 
thought trifling, but we hesitate not to express our conviction 
that it is to the consummate art which is thus displayed in 
stealing the supernatural characters upon the scene while our 
attention is engaged with illusions, and darkening the air with 
the mists of rhetoric while they mingle in the action of the piece 
unobserved, that the success of this work is mainly to be at- 
tributed, and that to the neglect of such methods of conciliating 
our feelings to the marvels of the narrative the failure of so many 
tales of enchantment, in which there has been no deficiency of 
power, is to be ascribed. In enterprises of every sort, the dif- 
ference between failure and success usually consists, not in some 
great matter, for that might easily be discovered or supplied, 
but in something of such infinitesimal littleness that it often 
eludes the consciousness of the creator and the enquiries of the 
reader. 

But the triumph of the author's genius in this rare production 
— the central gem among many gems — is undoubtedly the cha- 
racter of Undine. A child, to captivate the fancy, — a woman, 
to move the heart — a spirit, to raise and awe the soul, — with 
enchanting elegance she wears the drapery of a triple grace. 
Her charms might fire a sage ; her purity might recover a vol- 
uptuary. From the moment when we first hear her dashing 
water against the window of the hut, till we behold her dissolv- 
ing into tears at the grave of her lover, her beautiful life is at 
unity with itself and in sympathy with the highest delicacy of 
female excellence. She might be likened to a rainbow spanning 
a troubled sea, — which, formed of water and sunbeams, rises from 



172 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 24. 

the wave in soft divinity of splendor, and mounting, for a mo- 
ment, into the heavens, and diffusing round its path the lustre 
of peace, and joy, and hope, sinks again in the billow and 
leaves the darkened scene even gloomier than before. Her 
goodness, her loveliness, the sad disappointment of her gentle 
spirit, touch our feelings, irresistibly. As a conception of art, 
her character, before her marriage, has the freshness, lofty sim- 
plicity, and tone, of one of Shakspeare's women ; afterwards, the 
emotion of the character is allowed to predominate over the 
character and subdue it, more than Shakespeare would have 
permitted. If any defect may be suggested in a story so finely 
developed, it consists, perhaps, in the means by which the death 
of the Knight is accomplished, — a scene which revolts rather 
than rends the heart, and mingles a sensation of horror with our 
feeling towards the nymph. We should have wished, at least, 
to have it shown to us that Undine acted under some irresistible 
compulsion, to do what was not an instinct of her nature, but an 
awful necessity of her position ; but, had it been possible, we 
would have preferred that the death of the lover should have 
been accomplished by some other agency. But the inducements, 
and, sofar forth, the justification, of this irregularity in the aesthetic 
harmony of the piece, are moral and not critical. The disturb- 
ance of that serenity of satisfaction which belongs to the per- 
fection of fii't, has been caused by the impetuous force of the in- 
ner and informing thought, or truth, which is the living prin- 
ciple and guiding purpose of the tale. In fact, this romance, in 
its just intellectual conception, is an earnest and deep spiritual 
myth. It is a narrative, not of self-amusing fancy, but of alle- 
gorizing wisdom, in which the personages and their relations are 
symbolical of the sympathies and destiny of the human soul. 
This is the cause of the profound impression which this little 
work has made upon the greatest minds. The celestial life which 
love flashes into light within the boundless depths of our being 
■ — the immortal wrongs which are inseparable from love's ex- 
istence, and which are terrible in proportion to love's intensity 
— the mad resentments and the blazing ruin that are engendered 
of love, as the red lightning from the heaven-born warmth of 



^lAT. 19.J THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 173 

the summer air — these aud more fatalities that make up the 
mournful glories of passion, are illustrated with a subtle lore in 
this singular production. But our design has been to consider 
it only in its direct and external character as a creation of art, 
not in its hidden indications as a philosophical revelation, and 
we, therefore, continue in another paper the full exposition of 
the enigmas that make the higher interest of the work.* 



THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 

Le Comte de Gabalis, ou Eiitrotiens sur les Sciences Secretes. Paris, 1670. 

When Pope, in 1112, sent forth his immortal Rape of the 
Lock, with its machinery of sylphs, — the most brilliant work 
of England's most faultless poet — he said in the prefatory letter 
to Mrs. Arabella Fermor, that the action of the piece was raised 
" on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicruscian doctrine 
of Spirits ;" aud that he had derived his knowledge of these 
beings from a French book, called Le Comte de Gabalis. This 
was the first occasion on which these airy creatures ever played 
a part in any work of fiction, — at least under their proper names ; 
for, according to the infallible authority of the Count de Gabalis 
himself, the elves and fairies of the middle ages, the demons 
of antiquity, nay, the whole company of heathen gods and god- 
desses, were, in reality, nothing else but nymphs and sylphs. 
We are not sure whether the ingenious and candid Mr. Bowles 
included Pope's intrigue with the sylphs among the moral de- 
linquencies of the poet, but it is very certain that the little bard 
conferred immortality upon them. It must be admitted, how- 
ever, that he took a number of less warrantable liberties with 
them ; he lowered their dignity, changed their nature in some 

* This paper is unfortunately not found among the author's MSS., and is 
probably lost. The curious bibliographical essay which follows — remarkable, 
among other respects, as being one of Mr. Wallace's earliest productions, written 
originally at college in his 19th year — would seem to indicate that the elements 
of Fouqug's tale are derived from the Rosicruscian Philosophy. — Ed. 
15* 



174 LITEKAHY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 19. 

degree, and misrepresented their history. Notwithstanding the un- 
fading lustre whieh the various art and animated elegance of the 
copyist threw upon the subject, he spoilt the delicate distinctness 
and beauty of the original conception. Previously to their con- 
nection with him, they had been spoken of by Sir William Temple 
in his miscellanies : " I should as soon fall," he says, " into the 
study of the Rosicrusciau philosophy, and expect to meet a nymph 
or a sylph for a wife or a mistress :" which is said to be the 
earliest mention that is made of these matters by any English 
writer. Dry den, also, in writing to Mrs. Thomas in 1699, says, 
" Whether sylph or nymph, I know not ; those fine creatures, 
as your author. Count Gabalis, assures us, have a mind to be 
christened, and since you desire a name from me, take that of ' 
Corinna, if you please." 

This French work, therefore, appears to be the source of the 
knowledge which English writers have acquired of these vision- 
ary personages ; and although Fouque refers to Paracelsus as 
the primitive and papal authority in modern days, on all ques- 
tions of occult philosophy, yet as the love of the Cabala, on 
this particular, is presented not only with more completeness 
but with far greater liveliness and grace by the French author, 
we shall draw from him in preference to the obscurer fountains 
of Bombastes' wisdom. As the book alluded to is very little 
known, — being, in fact, as Mr. Coleridge used to say, " as good 
as manuscript" — we cannot bring the subject before our readers 
in any better or more agreeable manner than by giving a some- 
what detailed account of this dainty performance. The work is 
written with a prodigious deal of pleasantry and wit, and shows 
extraordinary learning and ingenuity ; so much in fact as to 
leave the reader still doubting — notwithstanding many satirical 
touches, and the mocking tone which prevails throughout, and 
in spite too of the author's express declaration both in the work 
and in a letter appended to it, — whether he was not really to 
some degree a believer in a scheme whose rationality and con- 
sistency he is at the pains to vindicate with such singular and 
careful ability. Certainly it presents not only the most beautiful, 
but the most plausible and connected system of spiritual exist- 



il-^AT. 19.] TUB ROSICRIISCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 1'75 

eiices that has ever been propounded. Some portions of the 
book are, however, rather more free than would be quite agreeable 
with the decorum of modern manners. 

Le Comte de Gabalis, ou Entretiens sur les Sciences Se- 
cretes, was first published at Paris in the year 1670 (Barbou). 
The edition which I possess is that of Metz, — "an cinq repuh- 
licain," — which answers to the Christian date, 1797. It has no 
name upon the title-page, but according to Bai^bier^s Dictionnaire 
des Auleurs Anomjmes et Fseudonymes, it was written by the 
Abbe Montfaugon de Villars. The following account is given 
of it in Dargonne's llelanges d'Hidoire et de Litterature 
(BoUerdam, 1700) : "The author of this diverting work is the 
Abbe Villars, who came from Thoulouse to Paris, to make his 
fortune by preaching. The five dialogues of which it consists, 
are the result of those gay conversations in which the Abbe was 
engaged with a small circle of men of fine wit and humor like 
himself. When this book first appeared, it was universally read 
as innocent and amusing. But at length its consequences were 
perceived, and reckoned dangerous, at a time when this sort of 
curiosities began to gain credit. Our devout preacher was de- 
nied the pulpit, and his book forbidden to be read. It was not 
clear whether the author intended to be ironical, or spoke all 
seriously. The second volume, ^vhich he promised, would have 
decided the question ; but the unfortunate Abbe was soon after- 
wards assassinated by ruffians on the road to Lyons. The 
laughers gave out that the gnomes and sylphs, disguised as 
ruffians, had shot him, as a punishment for revealing the secrets 
of the Cabala." 

In his first conversation, the Abbe informs us that he had 
always entertained such strong doubts of the soundness of what 
are called the secret sciences, that he never would become a regular 
student of them : at the same time, there were so many able and 
eminent persons, men distinguished at the bar, or famous for 
military skill, who were addicted to their pursuit, that it was not 
reasonable wholly to despise them, at least without some exami- 
nation. Accordingly, to satisfy his curiosity, and at the same 
time avoid the fatigue of turning over a whole library of books, he 



l>^g LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 19. 

resolved to frequent the society and seek the confidence of those 
who were devoted to cabalistic learning, and draw as much in- 
formation as he could from their conversation. For this pur- 
pose he determined to assume the character of one who was 
already a proficient in these sciences, and by pretending to know 
all, profit by the communications of those who knew something. 
This plan succeeded beyond his expectations, and he found that 
his reputation soon grew high. The philosophers whom he met 
had a sufficiently lofty opinion of their own proficiency, but he 
perceived that the attention of all those with whom he conversed 
was fixed with great interest upon a certain nobleman of dis- 
tinguished station and learning, who resided in Germany, not far 
from the borders of Poland. The sage had written that he 
should soon pay a visit to the initiated at Paris, on his way to 
England, and our Abbe had the honor to be commissioned to re- 
ply to his letter, and in doing so took occasion to enclose his 
horoscope. His communication produced a decided impression 
upon the philosopher, who wrote that the Abbe should be one 
of the first persons he should call upon in Paris, and if the stars 
did not oppose it, he should speedily be admitted into the fra- 
ternity of sages. A brisk correspondence ensued ; the nobleman's 
letters revealed extraordinary and magnificent discoveries ; and 
the Abbe found that he was dealing with a gentleman of " very 
lively and very spacious imagination." One day, as he was oc- 
cupied in his study with the perusal of some of these marvellous 
epistles, a man of stately and imposing aspect entered the room, 
and saluting him after a very sublime and odd fashion, presently 
let him know that he was his correspodent, the Count de Gabalis. 
He informed him that the horoscope which had been sent to him 
displayed so remarkable an adaptation for occult science, that 
there was no doubt the Abbe was destined to become a most 
illustrious philosopher, and that the hour proper for his regene- 
ration into the higher life of wisdom had nearly arrived. The 
following day was fixed upon for another interview, and after 
some further conversation, the Count rose to take his departure. 
" Watch, pray, hope, and do not talk," said he, and with these 



JiTAT. 19.] THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 177 

words he descended to his carriage, leaving our author in doubt 
whether his visitor was a madman, an impostor, or a dupe. 

On the following morning, at the appointed hour, the equip- 
age of the Count was at the door, and they drove out to Ruel, 
as a retired and unfrequented place, proper for the mystical com- 
munications which the noble sage was about to impart. On 
the wa.j, the Abbe occupied himself with studying the counte- 
nance and character of his singular acquaintance. It was a face 
marked by an expression of profound satisfaction, and pervaded 
by the dignified composure and serenity of one whose conscience 
was free from every stain, and whose mind dwelt habitually in 
the contemplation of pure and lofty truths. His conversation on 
politics and literature displayed great sagacity and thorough in- 
formation. When they came to Ruel, the Count disdained to 
admire the beauties of the garden, and marched straight to the 
labyrinth. After some high-flown speeches about the honor and 
felicity which awaited the Abbe in the initiation which was soon 
to take place, he gravely informed his pupil that, before he could 
be admitted into the society of sages, it was necessary that he 
should take a vow of perpetual chastity. The Abbe quickly set 
the mind of his companion at rest upon this particular by as- 
suring him that he had already, long since, voluntarily assumed 
the discipline of monastic purity, and had never yet in the whole 
course of his life deviated from the strictest propriety of conduct. 
"But," cries the Abbe, "as Solomon, who was a much wiser 
man than I ever expect to be, was not able with all his wisdom, 
to maintain his uprightness in this particular, suffer me to en- 
quire by what methods you gentlemen preserve yourselves from 
the allurements of this dangerous sex ; or what inconvenience 
would follow if in the paradise of philosophers every Adam 
should have his Eve?" 

"You touch upon a great mystery there," replied the Count, 
musing within himself for a moment. " But since you detach 
yourself so readily from women, I will let you know one of the 
reasons why the sages are obliged to exact this condition from 
their followers, and you will then perceive how profoundly igno- 
rant are all those who are not of our number. As soon as you 



lis LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 19. 

are enrolled among the sons of philosophy, and have strengthened 
your sight with the sacred applications which will be given to 
you, you will instantly perceive that the elements are inhabited 
by creatures of the most absolute perfection, whom the sin of the 
unfortunate Adam has prevented his too unhappy posterity from 
knowing and having communication with. This vast expanse 
between the earth and the heavens contains inhabitants of higher 
dignity than birds and gnats ; the infinitude of ocean was 
created for other guests than dolphins and whales ; the depths 
of the earth were not made for moles alone ; and the element 
of fire, more elevated than the other three, was not fashioned in 
order to remain void and useless. 

" The air is filled by a countless multitude of people, of human 
shape, a little haughty in their aspect, but very gentle in reality ; 
great lovers of science, subtle, officious to sages, but enemies of 
fools and ignorant persons. Their daughters and wives possess 
a kind of mannish beauty, such as is represented in the Amazons. 
The seas and rivers are inhabited in the same manner that the 
air is ; the old philosophers called these people Undines 
(Ondins), or nymphs. Of this race the males are few, but the 
females very numerous ; they possess the most exquisite beauty, 
and the daughters of men cannot be compared with them. The 
earth, in like manner, is filled to the centre with gnomes, a race 
of small stature, who act as guardians of the subterranean trea- 
sures, mines, and quarries. They are ingenious, friendly to men, 
and easy to command. They supply the children of the sages 
with all the gold that they require, and ask no recompense but 
the honor of being employed. The gnomides, their wives, are 
small, but extremely agreeable, and very quaint in their attire. 
As to the salamanders, the warm inhabitants of the region of 
fire, they also are the servants of the philosophers, but they do 
not seek their company with the same eagerness that the others 
do, and their wives and daughters are rarely seen. The latter, 
however, are very handsome, more so, indeed, than the females 
of any other order of these beings, because they are formed 
out of a purer element. However, I shall not at present say 
anything more upon the subject, for you will soon have an op- 



jEtat. 19.] THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. l^Q 

portunity of seeing for yourself these various inhabitants of the 
elements, and can converse with them at your leisure. You will 
examine their costume, their diet, their customs, their police, 
their admirable laws. You will be charmed with the elegance 
of their minds as well as that of their persons : but you will be 
unable to repress your pity for these unhappy beings, when they 
inform you that their soul is mortal, and that they have no hope 
of enjoying, through a blissful eternity, the presence of that 
divine being whose existence they acknowledge, and whose at- 
tributes they religiously adore. They will tell you that, being 
composed of the present particles of the elements which they 
inhabit, and having no commixture of baser qualities, they live 
for a vast length of time ; but what is the lapse of ages in com- 
parison of eternity? At last, they must sink forever into the 
abyss of nothingness. This consideration afflicts them deeply, 
and we have great difficulty in consoling them under it. 

" Our fathers, the philosophers, conversing with the Almighty 
face to face, lamented to Him the unhappy condition of these 
creatures ; and He whose mercy is without bounds, revealed to 
them that it was not impossible to find a remedy for the evil. 
He showed them that as man, by the connection which he has 
formed with the Deity, has become a partaker of the divine nature, 
so the sylphs, the gnomes, the nymphs and the salamanders, by 
contracting an alliance with man, may become sharers in his im- 
mortality. Accordingly, at present, a nymph, a sylphide becomes 
immortal, and capable of the blessedness to which we aspire, 
whenever she has the good fortune to marry a sage ; and a 
gnome or sylph ceases to be perishable when he espouses one 
of our daughters. These invisible beings are, therefore, con- 
stantly seeking to gain the affection of the inhabitants of the 
earth. The story which you read of in Jewish writers of the 
Sons of God loving the daughters of men, and of the giants 
which resulted from those nuptials, has reference, when pro- 
perly understood, to the marriage of nymphs and sylphs with 
women ; and the fables about satyrs and fairies have a similar 
signification. The innocent desires of the spotless creatures, so 
far from giving scandal to the philosophers, appear to us so 



IgO ' LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JEtat. 19. 

just and creditable, that we have all resolved to renounce with 
one accord the marriage of women, and dedicate ourselves to 
giving im)nortality to nymphs and sylphides. Admire, my son, 
the felicity of the sages ! Instead of women whose frail beauties 
fade after the lapse of a few days, and are succeeded by frightful 
wrinkles, the philosophers are the possessors of a loveliness 
which never fades, and to which they have the glory of imparting 
immortality. Judge of the affection and gratitude of these in- 
visible mistresses, and of the ardor with which they devote them- 
selves to please the charitable philosopher, who applies himself to 
the task of immortalizing them. 

" The cabalist acts only according to the principles of nature; 
and if you see in our books strange words and signs, and fumi- 
gation, this is only to deceive the ignorant. What I shall now 
communicate to you, is a portion of knowledge which we impart 
to those who are not. yet fit to be admitted into the recesses of 
wisdom, but from whom we would withhold the power of con- 
versing with these elementary creatures, chiefly on account of 
the interest which we take in the happiness of the latter. The 
salamanders, as I mentioned to you, are formed out of the 
subtlest particles of the sphere of flame, globed together and 
organized by the action of the universal fire, which is so called 
because it is the principle of all the movements of Nature. The 
sylphs, in like manner, are composed of the purest atoms of the 
air ; the nymphs of the finest grains of the water, and the gnomes 
of the most defecated essence of the earth. Originally, there 
was complete harmony between Adam and these creatures, for 
he being composed out of all that was purest in all the four 
elements, united in himself the perfections of all these beings, 
and was their natural king. But when the elements of his 
nature became foul by the contamination of guilt, this harmony 
was destroyed, for how could any proportion exist between a 
being gross and impure, and these refined and subtle essences ? 
What remedy, then, is there for this calamity ? How can this 
untuned lute be re-strung, and this lost sovereignty be recovered ? 
Nature, why will men consult thee so little ? Behold the 



^TAT. 19.] THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. Igl 

Bimplicity of the methods which Nature suggests for the restora- 
tion of the blessings which man has lost. 

" If you desire to recover the natural and original sway of oui 
being over the salamanders, for example, it is merely necessary 
to purify and exalt the element of fire within us, and to draw 
up the tone of that relaxed chord. For this purpose, the fire 
of the world must be collected in a globe of glass, by means of 
concave mirrors ; and this is the secret which all the ancients 
religiously concealed, and which the divine Theophrastus re- 
vealed. There is presently formed in this globe a solar powder 
which is divested of all mixture of other elements ; this being 
prepared according to art, becomes in a very short time suffi- 
ciently efficacious to exalt the fire which is within us, and to 
render us, if I may say so, of an ingenious nature. From that 
instant, all the inhabitants of the sphere of fire become our in- 
feriors, and delighted at finding that our mutual harmony is 
restored, and that we have come near to them again, they treat 
us with the affection which they show to their own kind, with 
the respect that is due to the images vicegerent of their creator, 
and all the attention which is suggested to them by the hope of 
obtaining from us the gift of immortality. It is true that the 
salamanders, being of a subtler essence than the others, are 
naturally longer-lived than they are, and therefore do not seek 
very zealously to be espoused to the sages. But it is not so 
with the sylphs and gnomes or the salamanders. As they live 
but a short time, they have more occasion for our services, and 
it is easier to obtain their familiarity. It is only necessary to 
seal up a glass vessel, filled with conglobate air, earth, or water, 
and to expose it to the sun for a month, and afterwards separate 
the elements according to the laws of science, which is very easy 
in the case of water and earth. It is astonishing what magnetic 
virtue each of th^se- purified elements possesses for the attraction 
of nymphs, sylphs, and gnomes. You have only to take the 
smallest possible quantity for a few days, and you will see in 
the atmosphere the floating republic of sylphs ; the nymphs 
will assemble in crowds upon the shores, and the guardians of 
the treasures of the earth will display their riches befoK^ you. 
16 



182 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 19. 

Thus, without signs, or ceremonies, or uncouth words, we be- 
come absolute over these creatures. They exact no worship 
from man, for they know that he is their superior. Thus does 
venerable Nature teach her children to restore the elements by 
means of the elements. Thus is the original harmony re-estab- 
lished, and man regains his proper empire, and becomes master 
of the world, without the aid of demons, or the resources of for- 
bidden arts." 

But, notwithstanding this philanthropic devotion on the part 
of the sages, it would appear from the discourses of the Count, 
that but a small portion of these interesting creatures become 
immortal ; this arises partly from the want of a sufficient number 
of philosophers for this extensive field of missionary labor, and 
partly because many of their subjects prefer to die rather than 
risk the danger of becoming miserable in the immortality which 
they fear may be a curse to them ; which last is a suggestion of 
the devil. The enthusiastic Comte de Gabalis proceeds to state 
another advantage which results from marriage with this in- 
visible creation, by which it would seem that the devil is cheated 
on the right hand as well as on the left ; for as the sylphides ac- 
quire an immortal soul from their alliance with men destined to 
heaven, so those men who have no share in the glory of eternity, 
those luckless children whom the sovereign parent has neglected 
to provide for, and to whom perpetual existence would be but 
a curse — for it would seem that these cabalists have a touch of 
Jansenism in their philosophy — have the option of becoming 
mortal by forming an alliance with these elementary people. 
Thus the sage runs no risk on the subject of eternity ; if he is 
predestinated to heaven, he has the pleasure, when he is released 
from the prison of the body, of leading to the skies the nymph 
or sylphide whom he has immortalized ; if he is not one of the 
elect, his intercourse with the sylphide renders his soul mortal, 
and he is delivered from the horrors of the second death. 

In a subsequent conversation, the Count proceeds to review 
with great learning and subtlety, the history of the heathen 
oracles. He combats the notion that the oracles were animated 
by diabolical influences, and displays on that subject a force of 



iETAT. 19.] THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 183 

argument, a variety of illustration, which we think it would 
severely task the faculties of Horsley himself successfully to 
oppose. He confutes with ease the notion of some among the 
ancients, that the prophetic answers were caused by exhalations ; 
and then gives the true explanation of the subject. The oracles 
in fact were sylphs, salamanders, gnomes and undines, who took 
pity upon the blindness of their fallen and darkened mastei", man. 
When the Deity gave up the care of the world, as a punishment 
for the first sin, these elementaiy beings took pleasure in reveal- 
ing to man through the medium of oracles, all that they learned 
from the Deity ; they exhorted mankind to live morally, and 
gave them those wise and salutary counsels, which are preserved 
in such great numbers by Plutarch and other historians. As 
soon as the Deity had compassion on the world, and came him- 
self to be its teacher, these instructors withdrew. Hence the 
silence of the oracles. For our part, after all that we have read 
on the subject of oracles, we prefer the theory of the Comte de 
Gabalis before all the others. 

The famous problem of the origin of evil is also solved by the 
Cabala, and the mystery of the garden of Eden cleared up. It 
was the intention of the Deity, it seems, that the world should 
be peopled by the marriage of Adam with the females of the 
elemental creation, and that Eve should be espoused to some 
husband of that race. The sin of our parents consisted in viola- 
ting this command, and contracting a nuptial alliance with one 
another : hence a dwarfed and degraded posterity. It is ob- 
servable that in the biography of nearly all the great heroes and 
sages of antiquity, and of many also during the early and 
middle ages of Christianity, it is related that one of their parents 
was a god, a demon, or a phantom. The Comte de Gabalis re- 
views these cases, and shows such pei'sons were in fact the off- 
spring of marriages contracted according to the original purpose 
of the divine will, between human and elemental beings. 

The characteristics of the different orders of these viewless 
creatures are veiy finely discriminated by our author, as the 
reader will, as to some particulars, already have seen. One fea- 
ture in their nature should not be overlooked, as it is specially 



184 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 14 

connected with a part of the machinery of La Motte Fouque's 
tale. The passions of the inhabitants of the air and the water, 
ai-e less amiable and smooth than those of the salamanders : their 
jealousy, in truth, is extremely bitter. . This was illustrated by 
an occurrence which is related by the divine Paracelsus, and 
which was seen by the whole city of Stauffenberg. A philoso- 
pher, who had contracted an alliance of immortality with a 
nymph, was so forgetful of his faith as afterwards to marry a 
woman. One day, as he was dining in company with his new 
mistress and some of her friends, the company suddenly beheld 
in the air the most beautiful ancle that was ever seen. The for- 
saken nymph was desirous of letting the friends of the bride- 
groom see what a great mistake he had made in preferring a 
woman to her. Immediately after this display, the injured nymph 
put the false lover to death. However, this jealousy extends 
only to women, and not to females of their own race, with whom 
the philosopher is permitted to indulge in the most unrestrained 
polygamy. They prefer the interest and immortality of their 
companions to their own private satisfaction, and they desire the 
sages to present to their republic as many immortal children as 
they can. 

As to the gnomes, their relation to men is more singular than 
that of the others, and as their characters have been decidedly 
libelled by the popular writers who have spoken of them, we 
conceive it but fair to allow the Comte de Gabalis to vindicate 
the reputation of his dusky friends, by his own unquestionable 
statements, in the course of which he clears up some particulars 
in demonology, in respect to which our vulgar knowledge is per- 
vaded with the grossest errors. 

" The gnomes," says the Comte, whom he represents as a mild 
and benevolent race, " become terrified by the infernal bowlings 
which the evil spirits keep up in the centre of the earth, and 
think it must be better to continue mortal than to run the risk 
of being tormented so awfully if they become immortal. These 
evil spirits, who are their neighbors, persuade the gnomes, natu- 
rally very friendly to man, that they will confer a great service upon 
any man whom they can induce to renounce his immortality. 



iBxAT. 19.] THE ROSICRUSCIAN PHILOSOPHY. 185 

They engage to give to any one from whom a guome can pro- 
cure such a renunciation, as much gold as he wants, or to avert 
some danger that awaits him, or do anything else he may desire. 
Thus the devil, villain that he is, by the intervention of the gnome, 
causes the soul of this man to become mortal, and deprives it of 
its right to eternal life." "Those compacts, then," said I (writes 
the Abbe), " of which the popular demonographies give us so 
many examples, are in reality not made with the devil himself?" 
" Certainly not," replied the Count. " Is not the Prince of this 
world driven out ? Is he not shut up ? Is he not tied ? Can 
he mount upwards to the regions of light, and diffuse through 
them the thickened gloom of hades ? He can do nothing against 
man, in his own person. He can only persuade the gnomes who 
are friendly to men, to convey these proposals of his to such of 
the human race as he most fears will be saved, in order that their 
soul may die with their body." "You think then that the souls 
of such persons die," said I. "My son, they die," replied the 
Count. " And are not condemned to tortures ? I think then 
that they get off very cheaply, and that their punishment is veiy 
slight for such a crime as renouncing their baptism and despising 
the death of the Lord." " Do you think it a light punishment," 
replied the Count, " to enter into the dark abyss of nothingness ? 
Know, that that is worse than to be condemned to tortures, — 
that there is a portion of mercy in the retribution which God 
exercises against sinners in hades, — and that it is of his grace 
that the fire does not consume those whom it burns.* Nothing- 
ness is a greater calamity than all these sufferings, and this is 
what the sages preach to the gnomes when they assemble them 
together to inform them what a mistake they make in choosing 
death rather than immortality, and nonentity in preference to 
a blessed eternity, which they might possess if they would ally 
tliemselves to the human race without requiring from them these 
profane renunciations. Some of them believe us, and we per- 

* It must be atlmittcd tbr.t tbe system of the Count is here somewhat con- 
tradictory ; for a little before he had represented annihilation, by means of an al- 
liance with a sylphide, as one of the privileges of those men who had been 
predestined to misery in a fntnre state. 
16* 



186 LITERARY LRITICISMtl. [J^tat. 19. 

mit them to marry our ladies." "You preach sermons then to 
these subterranean people ?" said I. " You evangelize them ?" 
" Why not ?" he replied. " Our mission is to teach them as well 
as the inhabitants of the fire, the air, and the water ; and philo- 
sophic charity diffuses itself indifferently over all the children of 
God. As these people are more intelligent and enlightened than 
the generality of men, they are more docile and capable of dis- 
cipline, and they listen to divine truth with a respect that is truly 
edifying." " I should think it would be extremely edifying," said 
I with a laugh, " to see a cabalist in a pulpit delivering a homily 
to those gentlemen." " You can enjoy that satisfaction, my son, 
whenever you will," said the Count; "if you choose, I will as- 
semble them this evening, and preach a sermon to them at mid- 
night." " At midnight ?" cried I. " I have always heard that 
that was the time of the devil's Sabbath." The Count began to 
laugh. " You put me in mind of the innumerable fooleries," said 
he, " which the demonographies relate about this Sabbath. The 
devil, my son, has no power to sport in that way with the human 
race, or to make covenants with them, much less to compel them 
to worship him. What has given rise to the common opinion 
on this subject is this. The sages, as I have told you, from 
time to time assemble together the inhabitants of the elements 
to give them moral instruction and to preach to them on the 
mysteries of religion. On these occasions it generally happens 
that some gnome is reclaimed from the error of his ways, is made 
to understand the horrors of annihilation, and thus consents to 
be made immortal. We give him a lady for his wife ; the mar- 
riage is celebrated on the spot, and the nuptial festivities are 
honored with the rejoicing that is due to the importance of 
such a conquest. This is the origin of those dances, and cries 
of joy, which Aristotle says had been heard in islands where no 
person was to be seen. The great Orpheus was the first who 
convoked these subterraneous people. At his first preachment, 
Sabasius, the most ancient of the gnomes, was immortalized ; and 
it is from this Sabasius that the assemblages of this kind took 
their name, for as long as he lived the sages always addressed 
their discourse to him, as you may see in the hymns of Orpheus, 



^TAT. M2.] LEGAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 187 

Ignorant people have taken occasion to confuse this subject ex- 
tremely, to invent a thousand impertinences about it, and traduce 
a convocation which we hold only for the honor and glory of 
the Supreme Being." 

The Count took leave of the Abbe, to think over the heads of 
the discourse which he intended to pronounce that evening to 
the gnomes. The next day he shows him a copy of it as he had 
delivered it. " II est merveiUeux .'" exclaims the Abbe. He 
promised to lay it before the public, together with other conver- 
sations which he had held with this extraordinary personage. 
The promised volume, however, never appeared. It is odd 
enough, by the by, that the volume which we have just been 
speaking of, opens with an announcement of the death of Comte 
de Gabalis by apoplexy. " Ill-natured people," says the author, 
" will not hesitate to say that this is the fate which generally 
awaits those who make a bad use of the secrets of the sages, and 
that ever since the beatified Raymond Sully pronounced sen- 
tence upon such persons in his will, an angel has never been 
wanting as executioner to wring the necks of all those who in- 
discreetly reveal the mysteries of philosophy." It would seem 
from the anecdote which we have related above, that something 
like the catastrophe which was thus jestingly assigned to the 
fictitious Count, speedily overtook the Abbe de Yillars himself. 



The Legal Rights op Woman : Being remarks in faror of a Legislative 
creation of independence of property in Married Life, and allowing the 
Elective Franchise to both sexes. By a member of the Society of Friends. 
Pamphlet, pp. 40. 1848. 

The political philosophy of this age appears to us to be 
characterized rather by sensibility in the benevolent ends which 
it proposes, than by wisdom in the means which it employs for 
arriving at them. Its capital fault is, that it legislates directly 
to its objects, in matters in which direct legislation, by human 
power, is impotent ; instead of studying the laws which Nature, 
or rather, a fore-planning, creative Providence has given to the 



188 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 32. 

social relations of humanity, and through them, mediately, and 
often remotely producing the results which it sees to be desirable, 
or rather so arranging the subjects to be influenced, according 
to the laws of nature, that the inherent forces in man's consti- 
tution shall themselves work out the best effects which Provi- 
dence has jiermitted them to reach. In political subjects, man 
has yet to learn the lesson of his own utter impotency, and till 
then, he will never know the secret of his boundless, his magni- 
ficent capacity to control. In material science this discovery 
has been made, and it is the origin of the sublime mastery which 
human intelligence has acquired in physics. Bacon, the inspired 
of intellect — the poet and the prophet of tlie truth of things 
sensible — ascertained that the extent of man's power over the 
outward world is to change the relative distances in space, of 
material bodies, and that all the rest is wrought out by nature 
herself ; and this revelation, by leading all science to investigate 
the laws of that all-operating nature, and all art to act in subor- 
dination to them, exalted man into a higher order of beings, 
gave the continuing energies of creation to him in commission, 
and in regard to visible existence, might not irreverently be said 
to have put all things under his feet. That there are such fixed 
laws in the moral world, however difficult fully to be discovered, 
has been felt with the fervor of inspiration, though dimly seen, 
by some great master-spirits of social science, such as Vico and 
Burke ; but has never been dreamt of by that insane metaphysi- 
cal philosophy which rules the popular legislation of this country, 
and which, in the last century, justly moved the statesman of 
Beaconsfield, intellectually, to the intensest contempt, and mor- 
ally to a mingled disgust, detestation and terror. That woman, 
in the relation of married life, as that relation has existed hitherto, 
is to some extent necessarily exposed to hardships and suifer- 
ings, and that, according to the very principle of that relation, 
her happiness is to a fearful extent dependent upon her husband, 
is a fact of universal experience. But what will you do — since 
it is agreed that the world is so imperfect that unless we mend it 
thoroughly, we shall be disgraced by being seen abroad in it ? 
The metaphysical philosophy will remedy the so-called evil by 



^TAT. 32.] LEGAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 189 

abolishing the principle of the common law which merges the 
existence of the wife, legally, in that of the husband, and by 
giving her an independent position and plenary rights. The 
maxim of the common law, in our opinion, was not a theory or 
plan contrived by men for disposing of a subject over which they 
had unlimited control, but was meant to be an expression of the 
truth of facts as they exist in life, and an accommodation of the 
action of human law to the state of things as is established by 
the divine law ; not the proclamation of that which ought to be, 
but the recognition of that which is. Now this popular system, 
which promises by convulsing to reform the world, recasts the 
whole relation, and brings the parties together on the footing 
of independent partners in the trade and business of life, capable 
of determining and prescribing the terms and conditions of the 
union, according to their sovereign will. We do not think thus 
of marriage. We are of opinion that it is a state entirely of 
natural relation, and not of voluntary human contrivance ; that 
it results, in a certain definite form, from instincts and tendencies 
in man, delicate and impalpable, yet irresistible and eternal : 
and that the relative position of the parties, as a resultant from 
natural and organic causes, is fixed as absolutely and unchange- 
ably as the mutual dependency of parts of the organization of 
an individual being. From all these appointments and provis- 
ions established in the natures of things, the great law results, 
that the wife and the husband become one in marriage, neither 
strictly being subordinated to the other, but both being merged 
into the unity of a new moral existence. This transforma- 
tion of persons is not notional and fictitious ; it is a divine reality. 
Who does not remember, and who did not admire, the beautiful 
lecture of Mr.Dana upon "Woman?" The intellectual merit 
of that discourse consisted in apprehending, — as the central 
germ of truth upon the subject, and in developing through 
its manifold branchings, — the law of the inherent moral dif- 
ference of the sexes. According to this fine conception, cha- 
racters, thoughts, passions, sentiments, and all things within, 
have their sexes. The natui-e, sphere and duty of the several 
parties stand together in a relation of beautiful antagonism, 



190 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 32. 

one being the complement of the other, in such wise that per- 
manent diversity is the only harmony, and similarity is dis- 
cord and error. Certainly, the only true education and advance- 
ment of woman consist in development according to the organic 
principle of her moral being ; and as that is one of polar oppo- 
siteness to man's, her refinement is soiled, her dignity impaired 
and her power diminished, by every attempt to approximate 
her to man's character, talents or employments. It is only as 
woman is thoroughly womanly in her sphere of action, in the 
subjects of her interest, and in her modes of feeling, that she can 
enjoy that controlling influence over man, and exert that eleva- 
ting, purifying and refining action upon society, which is the 
glory of her sex and the blessedness of the other. 

Now the ofiice of human government in the matter is this : 
to ascertain the normal relation of the parties in married life, as 
it is constituted by abiding natural causes, and, in conformity 
with that relation, to regulate those things over which it has con- 
trol, in such a way as to preserve that relation always from vio- 
lation and disturbance. But how can there be found in distinct- 
ness and in independence, an advancement of that comfort, whose 
very life consists in union and identity ? That protection should 
be given to the vrife against the husband's misfortunes, is most 
proper. It is a protection not more to her than to him ; indeed, 
more to him than to her. It assumes, acknowledges, and main- 
tains their essential unity. And special cases may suggest them- 
selves where, by those forms of legal settlements, perfectly fa- 
miliar to us all, special evils should be controlled. But why as 
an organic law should there be sought in protection against the 
husband, a promotion of her honor and true dignity whose only 
safety is through him and in him ? In attempting to get her 
happiness, in that relation, free from some of the accidents which 
undoubtedly do attend it, you destroy the very being of that 
happiness, because you interfere with the conditions of its exist- 
3nce. Now, if the common law neglected some matters of detail, 
in relation to property, which might have been more wisely regu- 
lated, it always received and maintained the great principle of 
moral and social unity in married life : the modern system, in 



a5TAT. 29.] FANNY FOEESTER. I9I 

endeavoring to prevent certain possible, but after all, very rare, 
evils of detail, fatally wounds the essential and true principle. 
A system of society reconstructed upon the plan of this meta- 
physical school of politics — which is not a new school, and in 
advance of the times, but is the exploded folly of all the schools, 
thrown behind it by the sense and practice of every age — would 
be in opposition to all the laws of Providence, and would be as 
enduring and effective as an engine whose construction was in 
direct antagonism to the laws of mechanics. Let no legislator 
attempt to be more powerful than Nature, or wiser than Truth, 
or better than God. 



Trippings in Author-Land. By Fanny Forester. 

[Extract from the Author's Diary, "January 1, 1846, I went this morning 
to St. Peter's ChurcLi; afterwards paid some visits; Mr. Chauncey, my uncle, 
Miss Fanny Forester. This last one, whose true name is the unimpressive one of 
Chiibhuclc, is a person of very considerable interest. Her talent, as a writer of 
light fictions, I rate highly. There is a delicacy and genuineness in her cha- 
racter which render her quite engaging in social intercourse. While we were 
talking about something, she suddenly cried out, ' Oh, Mr. "Wallace, I must 
show you a notice of my book,' and forthwith ran up stairs and brought down 
a newspaper containing an extract from 'The Gospel Messenger,' in which 
her ' Trippings in Author-land,' were spoken of with the most vulgar, stupid 
and brutal contempt. She laughed, but really, I believe, was deeply wounded. 
If I can find any proper place I will cuff this reverend booby over the mazard, 
in the way that his insolent coarseness deserves."] 

The future historian of letters will surely note, as a distinction 
of these times, the remarkable and great extent to which every 
department of literary effort, during thirty years past, has been 
illustrated and adorned by feminine talents. The earlier records 
instances of learvied ladies — a very respectable guild, but not 
the less, occasionally, a little tedious, for being at all times ve- 
hemently dignified in manner and topics ; and some examples of 
an extremely o]5]30site class of performers, chiefly in fiction and 
the drama, who by extravagance of invention and freedom of 
allusions, sought to supply the absence of that delicacy, with 



192 LITEllAKY CKITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

whose departure from female sentiment, every true excellence 
takes its eternal leave. It was about the beginning of this 
centuiy that, for the first time in the annals of any nation, a 
first-rate reputation, upon a great scale, in the highest regions 
of intellectual exertion, was deserved and obtained by one of the 
gentler sex. Then, for the first time, the mind of Europe bowed 
and yielded, not with respect only, but with awe and wonder, to 
the leading vigor, the brilliant energy, and copious fervor of a 
woman's understanding ; for Madame De Stael is as much an 
authority in the philosophy of politics, and of its kindred social 
concerns, as she is an idol and a worship in the more glittering 
scenes of imaginative art. Nor was she a luminary with whose 
going down the day is ended ; but rather was a sort of Hesperus, 
to lead in a beaming throng, in whose various lustre the rays still 
separately shine, of that brightness whose solid and thick 
splendors will perhaps never again be admired in union, as they 
were admired in her. At this moment, fully one-half of those 
who hold the popular attention in England, are of that sex 
whose acknowledged abilities we had formerly been wont to 
find displayed by conversation rather than by the pen. In this 
country, probably, the proportion is still larger. In every di- 
rection, on every class of subjects, in every kind of style, we meet 
with that sparkling freshness of sentiment, that animated ease, 
and interest without effort, that innate justness of reflection and 
fine preciseness of apprehension which are the special and un- 
communicable charms of feminine genius. Amongst all this 
bright company of native authoresses, there is none whose dis- 
plays we always follow with a more gratified interest, or of 
whose future distinction we take a more confident omen, than 
the lady who relunctantly " suffers herself to be desired" under 
the name of Fanny Forester. 

She possesses many talents ; and an assemblage of lesser 
accomplishments, which, in her, seem to be so genuine and in- 
stinctive that they might almost be mistaken for natural talents. 
The movements of her mind have a quiet, soft brightness, that 
seems to shine for itself rather than for others, and to be spon- 
taneous, more than exerted ; glowing, apparently, without desigji, 



iETAT. 29.] rAXM' FORESTER. -[93 

and almost in despite of consciousness. Her powers of reasoning 
are strong ; her feelings prompt and abounding ; her sense of 
humor, quick and various — but these, and other faculties, are 
subordinated, in their exercise, to a delicacy of character and 
taste, ethereal almost in sensibility, and timorous, even painfully, 
of every offence against refinement — the deepest, surest fascina- 
tion that can belong to a woman ; beautiful in the errors it may 
lead to, and most enchanting, perhaps, when it is most in excess ; 
whose power is as enduring as the pleasure which it imparts is 
pure and exquisite. But there are secondary qualities, going 
to the manner, rather than to the nature or degree of that 
capacity which we desire to define as constituting a great and 
splendid faculty in this gentle and modest person. We regard 
her as possessing talents for narrative of a very high and rare 
order — talents which place her in the front rank of writers of 
domestic fiction on either side of the water. 

All that is comprehended in the assertion of this power, might 
not, perhaps, be very easily or briefly defined. " It is difficult," 
says Horace Walpole, " in English, to relate, without falling too 
low, or rising too high; a fault obviously occasioned by the 
little care taken to speak pure language in common conversa- 
tion. " The defect, however, lies far deeper than this ; and 
even so far as it is an aiiair of style, the analysis of the difficulty 
will be found, as all other matters of style are, only among the 
very elements of mental and moral speculation. A fiction of 
familiar life, perfectly executed, appears to involve the har- 
monious operation of a greater number of diversified powers 
than any other kind of literary effort whatever, more even than 
the drama : an opinion that will hardly be deemed extravagant, 
if we are considered right in thinking that the task was scarcely 
ever accomplished with absolute felicity, except by Sir Walter 
Scott, and Miss Austen. To develop a scene by means of all 
its characteristic particulars — to unfold an action by the de- 
scription of those circumstances of it that would be present to 
the consciousness of any one who was a partaker in it, and 
which, in an aesthetic point of view, may be said to constitute 
the identity of the transaction — this is the faculty we are alluding 
17 



194 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 29. 

to ; which we surely cannot err in deeming uncommon in its 
kind and exalted in its comparative value. To note all the 
elements of a scene — to select and order them — to choose among 
the indefinite number of methods — direct or associative — descrip- 
tive, suggestive, or inferential — ^by which notions may be con- 
veyed to the reader — to play at once, and harmoniously, upon 
the mind, the fancy and the feelings, for the production of one 
rich symphony of imaginative effect — this, truly, might be thought 
to be even beyond all attainment. Indeed, the problem is be- 
yond intellectual solution, and can be accomplished only by 
genius ; using intellect for the measure of that power within us 
which analyzes, and acts because it understands, and giving the 
name of genius to that part of our understanding which appre- 
hends rationally beyond where it can analyze, and moves cor- 
rectly from an instinct of right, and an involuntary and natural 
sympathy with truth and beauty. But the more familiar and 
acquired capacities which this divine faculty may use as its in- 
struments for the construction of moral fictions, will be found to 
exhaust the farthest reach of mental accomplishment. An 
originative and brilliant fancy — a nice perception — a vigorous 
ideality — sense, tact, and judgment — these, in their best con- 
ditions, are of constant requirement ; but the finest effects can be 
imparted to a tale of incidents, only by that correct acquaint- 
ance with character, in its individual varieties, and with human 
nature at large, to which much experience and much reflection 
must have contributed. 

Such masterly touches as these it is — partaking of a nature 
of greatness — which impart to the narratives of this engaging 
person their rare effectiveness. 

We are struck with the marked and increasing superiority of 
the later compositions of this lady over her earlier ones. The 
capacity to improve is one of the most certain marks of the 
higher order of minds ; and we are accustomed, in everything, 
to look for it, as a distinguishing test of a real and abiding 
power in opposition to the mere talent to flash and dazzle. 
" The Bank Note," which is one of her latest productions, is 
contrived and conducted with genuine ability ; it is a successful 



^TAT. 30.] NOUKSE'S LEGACIES OF THE PAST. 195 

attempt to portray a very common, but very eomplext, puzzling 
character, kindred in some respects to the " Chloe" of the poet, 
and to impart interest to a train of occurrences extremely simple 
and ordinary, but of deep moral interest. We are desirous to 
see the fine and varied faculties which this lady unquestionably 
possesses, executed upon some extensive and sustained work of 
fiction, upon which all her powers may be fully concentrated and 
tasked. She lingers below her destiny in being contented with 
even the greatest popularity ; the native and true atmosphere 
of her renown is in the regions of fame. 



Remarks on the Past, and its Legacies to Ainerican Society. "Westward 
the course of Empire takes its way." By J. D. Xodrsk, Louisville, Kx. 

AVe have rarely been surprised into the pleasure of so high 
an admiration as has been inspired by the perusal of this work. 
We have been debtors to it for one of the rarest and most inti- 
mate gratifications that we ever experience ; — that of having all 
our intellectual and moral faculties thoroughly breathed by a 
vigorous thinker — of wrestling with a great mind, in generous 
contest, until it gives us the blessing of its inspiration. Mr. 
bourse's little volume has stirred the depths of our nature with 
a genial agitation of pleasure and improvement ; and if the 
tumult of admiration which it has left behind should disturb our 
discrimination of the qualities which have contributed to our 
enjoyment, or our estimate of the exact comparative value of the 
work as a contribution to philosophy, our very inability or in- 
disposition to distinguish or decide with judicial coldness, will 
be the most genuine evidence and measure of a peculiar and 
superior excellence. 

It gives us satisfaction to send to Mr. Nourse, across the in- 
terval of half a continent, the greeting of our appreciation and 
respect ; and we shall feel that we perform the least questionable 
duty of our office, in diff'using the reputation of one who has cul- 
tivated, with such ability, that noble literary art, which, after 



196 LITERARY .CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

the ignoble contests of gain have been forgotten, and the frivo- 
lities of fashionable extravagance have perished, remains forever 
the pride, and boast, and ornament of a nation. 

Mr. ISTourse not only belongs to the ranks of genius, but is 
entitled to take his place in that higher order of creative minds, 
in which the capacity of great, sustained, and just thought co- 
exists with the glow of fancy and the fire of passion. That 
mental energy which develops itself into luxuriant forms of 
beauty, is apt to turn upon a centre within itself, and its con- 
ceptions have a personal and individuated character : — for those 
high, and combined, and continuing processes of ratiocination, 
by which the avenues of wisdom are opened, and speculation is 
sent along the line of abstract and essential truth, we commonly 
look to those severer minds in which a devotion to science has 
absorbed the intellectual essence which else would have flowered 
into poetic illustration. When these two characters are brought 
into union — when we meet with an inspiration so abounding, 
and a literary accomplishment so complete and harmonious, that 
while Thought is moving onward in its high and grand orbit 
of philosophic reason. Imagination is circling its progress with 
the graces of art, and the ardors of emotion are breathing before 
it — we recognize the first class of great and comprehensive in- 
telligences. To reduce a subject into the exact form of science, 
and then to charge this forna with the vital warmth and color 
of poetry, is to accomplish the loftiest task of genius, and to 
exhibit the richest forces of human understanding. Nothing 
gives us a more essential delight, than to meet with an author 
whose production addresses our whole nature at once, and while 
it exercises and impresses our intellect, kindles our feelings and 
enchants our fancy. 

The Philosophy of History — under that majestic concejition 
in which it has presented itself to the most profound and com- 
prehensive thinkers of modern Europe as the grand ensemble 
of the laws, and tendencies, and influences, and characteristics, 
and circumstances of human development, as exhibited in the 
past — is the dignified theme which the author has chosen for 
the display of his powers of analysis and illustration. It is the 



Mtxt. 30.] NOURSE'S LEGACIES OF THE PAST. I97 

great subject of study in this age ; and worthy to engage every 
interest and faculty of cultivated minds. In his general manner 
of apprehending the subject, and in the fundamental principles 
from which he takes his departure, Mr. Nourse is fairly up to 
the level of the foremost inquirers in this science in Europe. He 
has thoroughly appreciated their teachings, and appropriated 
what is valuable in them. But he brings to the work powers 
capable of advancing the march of philosophy, and shedding 
light over many obscure parts of the field. We have met with 
many views of entire originality ; wherever we find an opinion 
expressed upon any incidental subject, it is marked by the dis- 
crimination and strength of a powerful mind : and when sug- 
gestions from the writings of others have been adopted, they are 
recast in the depths of an ardent reflection, and given forth with 
fresh beauty, and in a new form. 

We give a few observations, conceived in a spirit of wise and 
high-toned philosophy, explaining the title of the work, and 
showing the noble practical interest towards which the inquiry 
tends : 

" Contempt for the past, especially in relation to civil concerns, is an error 
to ■which, from obvious causes, American society is peculiarly exposed, and 
which it therefore becomes the duty of the American writer to combat. We 
are in little danger of falling into that opposite extreme, which in Europe 
takes the form of high conservatism, and with desperate perverseness throws 
itself into direct opposition to the resistless tendencies of modern society. 
From the nature of the case, toryism can never take deep root in American 
soil, and it is idle to aim our blows at an imaginary foe, while a real and por- 
tentous tendency threatens the extinction of all reverence for the past, and 
with it all that ennobling class of emotions, which are allied to such reverence 
as their parent stock. * * * Some are absurd enough to contend for what 
they call an American education, which shall cut us off from the past, and 
cancel all our obligations to the old world. But no nation ever became great 
by this process, nor ever will. We must recollect that if we can seo a little 
further than those who have gone before us, we stand upon a mental pyramid 
piled up by the labors of countless generations ; that it is our business to carry 
it still farther towards heaven, not to look down with scorn upon the great 
works of our predecessors, or become little in the contemplation of our own 
greatness. Other nations may still have remnants of old abuses to demolish ; 
our task is not to destroy, but to preserve and build up. We have nothing to 
spare of the legacies of the past. * * * The human mind can entertain but 
one passion at a time, suflieiently overruling and intense to effect great 



198 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [Mtxt. 30. 

changes in society; and revolutionary ardor has been so busy with the work 
of demolition, that it is not wonderful that many should turn their backs upon 
the past, forgetful of its greatness, and of their obligations to it, and look for- 
ward to the future with boundless hopes and chimerical schemes for the radical 
regeneration of society. Yet there is nothing more certain, than that no moral 
or political organization, wholly severed from the past, can live. We may 
repair dilapidated institutions, from time to time, and adapt them to the new 
exigencies of society ; but we must preserve the old foundations, the great 
principles, or our structure will not stand the test of time and experience. It 
ii the order of Providence, that the new should be evolved from the old in 
tuch a manner, that the life and soul of one should be gradually transfused 
iuto the other. Great revolutions may seem to interrupt this order for a time, 
bat after the earthquake has rolled away, the stream resumes its former chan- 
nel, only clearer, broader, fceer from obstructions than before." 

Mr. Nourse belongs to that young and glorious school of 
nature and freedom, which has succeeded to the perverse and 
malignant skepticism of the last age. His mind seems to be tho- 
roughly delivered from the wretched metaphysics which enslaved 
the politics and morals of the day just gone by ; those narrow- 
ing prejudices of parties, sects and schools, which prevailed so 
generally as to suggest to an observer, that thought, instead of 
being the freest and boldest thing in the universe, is the most 
enfettered and cowardly. The disposition to believe — the ten- 
dency to recognize a wisdom in the movements of the world at 
large. — a readiness to submit individual thought to the higher 
and grander sagacity that dwells in society, and is evolved by 
experience — the habitudes of sympathy, and love, and reverence 
- — which have ever been the characteristics of the great, guiding 
spirits of the race — of Plato, Cicero, Bacon and Burke — are the 
line attributes of this new, vigorous class of thinkers, — among 
the foremost of whom we confidently place the author of the 
present volume. He has perceived and explored the character- 
istics of that higher, broader, and deeper sense that breathes 
from the providential development of nations, and his pen moves 
with the energy of consciousness and genuine sense. The West 
may well be proud of a man whom the East would gladly 
select as a representative to Europe of what America can do in 
philosophy. 

The most important clement in modern civili/^ation, according 



.-fiTAT. 3U.] NOURSE'S LEGACIES OF THE PAST. 199 

to Mr. Nourse, is Christianity : and the following remai'ks in 
relation to the nature of the Evidences of Christianity are con- 
ceived in the spirit of a profound philosophy ; worthy of the 
mind of Butler. After removing some of the metaphysical 
objections to miracles, he proceeds : — 

" But the truth is, that much more importance has been attached to the 
argument from miracles than it deserves. The miracles ascribed to Christ and 
his apostles, however conclusive to those who witnessed them, are no evidence 
to us, until b>/ other means, we have established the truth of the writings which 
record them — that is to saj-, until we have proved all that Ave wish to prove. 
They cannot weigh a feather with any clear-headed inquirer, who does not 
find in Christianitj- a supply of his own moral wants, the proper and whole- 
some food of his own spiritual nature, and the source of countless blessings to 
society. A syllogism may suffice for a single barren proposition; a vast sys- 
tem of life-giving truth, like Christianity, draws to its support a variety of 
indepeudeut, but mutually eorrobating testimonies. Combining the early 
monuments of Christianity, and the evidence which may be drawn from the 
history of the Christian civilization, with those convictions that spring up in 
every healthy soul, when its higher faculties are roused into activity, we have 
an edifice which may defy the assaults of skeptical philosophy. 

"One mind will attach greater weight to one portion of this converging evi- 
dence; another to another, according to mental constitution, or early habits 
of thinking. It is probable that, for the majority of enlightened believers at 
the present day, the keystone of the arch which spans the gulf between earth 
and heaven, is that sort of persuasion in which deep feeling has a much larger 
share than cold logic. 

"The most indubitable miracle of early Christianity was the heroic self- 
devotion of its first propagators. The Apostle of the Gentiles, of all mere 
men the sublimest example of moral heroism, travelled from place to place, 
supporting himself and his companions by the labor of his own hands, and 
preaching the truth without fee or reward; well assured, that in whatever city 
he entered, bonds and afiiictions awaited him. He fought with wild beasts at 
Ephesus; he braved the cruelty of the Pagans and the hatred of his own 
countrymen ; he stood undazzled amid the classic glories of Athens and the 
wonders of Grecian art, and proclaimed the new doctrine, unmoved by the 
.sneers of the gayest, the most refined, the most intellectual people on earth. 
Dragged in chains before the proconsuls of Asia, he made them tremble on 
their judgment-seats : he planted the cross upon the seven hills, at the very 
gates of the vast palaces of those terrible Caesars, who made the world trem- 
ble from the borders of Ethiopia to the shores of the German Ocean ; and 
crowned his glorious life by a painful death amidst the ferocious sports of the 
amphitheatre !" 

The function of the olden nations, in Mr. ISTourse's view, was 
to prepare the race for the introduction and diffusion of Christi- 



200 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [JEtat. 30. 

anity. " To the Hebrews," he considers, "was allotted the cus- 
tody of moral and religious truth ; to the Greeks, the empire of 
reason and imagination ; to the iron Romans, the power of arms, 
by which, with their own civil institutions, and the arts, literature 
and religion of the other two nations, they were to lay a broad 
and deep foundation for the Christian civilization. Upon that 
foundation, the free Germans were to build the modern world." 
Each of these departments of partial civilization is traced with 
great interest and beauty in the first chapter of the work, till 
they come together at the Christian era. As an illustration of 
the vivid and various sympathy of the author's mind, which 
combines the love and power of art with the insight of philoso- 
phic judgment, and recognizes the creative energy of imagination 
and sentiment as permanent and indispensable parts of our being, 
both individually and socially, we extract passages relating to 
the dignity of Poetry, the poetical capacities of real life, and 
the artistic resources of the present time : 

" It is a remarkable fact, that in the earliest periods of civilization, in the 
robust and fervid youth of great nations, Poetry, that divine melody of thought 
and words, is always the first language of the newly awakened intellect. As 
civilization advances, and the cold abstractions of science take the life-like 
creations of the imagination, Poetry withdraws more and more from the do- 
main of the understanding. But though a high state of intellectual cultiva- 
tion more clearly defines the respective boundaries of science and poetry, it is 
by no means necessarily unfavorable to the latter, as many have supposed. 
Poetry, more and more hemnied in by reality, finds in reality new and inexhaus- 
tible resources. 

" The vulgar and trivial details of actual life are apt to blunt our perceptions 
of its greatness. The bright dreams of youth, and the thoughtful sadness of 
maturer years; the deep communings of the soul with nature and with Godj 
the fond loyalty which cherishes the memories of heroes and great benefactors 
of mankind ; self-sacrificing patriotism which attaches to the idea of country 
an infinite import, and sacred obligations; rapt devotion, whether it recognize 
the Divine Presence in the Gothic Cathedral, amid the forest aisles, or on the 
sounding sea-shore; — what are all these things, but the rising undulations of 
that deepest part of our mysterious nature, in \vhich arc the fountains of poetry 
and religion ? 

" If we imagine a rational creature, upon a level with the highest of our 
species, to reach the maturity of his powers in another state of being, and then 
to have all his perceptions and sensibilities suddenly opened upon this world, 
in any of its brightest or most fearful aspects, what deep thoughts, what 



JEtat. 30.] NOURSE'S LEGACIES OF THE PAST. OQl 

childish wonder, love or awe would fill his whole soul! The poetical temper- 
ament preserves in a greater or less degree this child-like freshness, which cus- 
tom withers ia other men; and by mysterious affinities, it draws to itself tho 
poetry of life and nature from the alloy of commonplace ingredients. It is un- 
questionably the greatest triumph of art to idealize the present; for distance 
either in time or space renders the materials of poetry more pliant. Through 
the same mists that conceal from us the vulgar and trivial details, the grander 
features of the scene loom up into shapes of beauty or terror. 

" Consciously or unconsciously, the poetical temperament links every thing 
finite and perishable with the infinite and imperishable, and our little life here 
with the boundless and evorlasting existence that awaits us. AVhatever form 
poetry may take, and whatever may be the nature of the materials which 
it draws from the actual world, its essential inspiration is the ineradicable 
desire of the human soul, for a wider, a more beautiful, a more powerful exist- 
ence than the present. 

"When the poet is destitute of religious faith, the mighty cravings of his 
soul, and a vivid sense of the frightful discrepancy between the aspirations 
and the supposed destiny of man, may eat into his heart, tear asunder his 
whole nature, and fever it into despair, madness, or suicide. A happier creed 
may overarch life with the rainbow of hope, and pour over nature tho light of 
eternity. In either case, the poet filled with the ideal, and with that infinite 
love and awe which only the ideal can inspire, becomes the unconscious prophet 
of deeper and mightier truths than the boasted deductions of science. Even 
in science, no great thing was ever done by a man who had not a spice of 
poetry in him. As will appear more fully in the progress of our inquirj-^, those 
branches of art and literature which strive to embody the aspirations of man 
in forms of ideal beauty or power, have performed a very important part in 
human culture. 

" Indeed, the history of Christianity itself, including the life and death of 
its Divine Founder, the moral heroism of its martyrs and apostles, and the 
long warfare which it has waged against ignorance, sin and misery, is a mighty 
epic, of which God is the author; and the refinements of chivalry, the triumphs 
of art, and the glories of science, are the episodes. Religion has directly or 
indirectly been the source of that poetry of action, which has shed a never- 
dying glory over the great and stirring periods of modern history. It is ob- 
vious that we use the term Poetry in its general sense of passionate recognition 
of all beautiful, glorious, and sublime things, manifested, not only in verse, 
painting, sculpture, architecture, but anything which ennobles man, embellishes 
life, or refines society, provided it can be embodied in sensible forms, or asso- 
ciated with images more or less distinct. Not only the greatest works of art, 
but the finest traits and noblest triumphs of civilization, aro manifestation.s of 
that divine and perennial spirit of Poetry, without which life would be a poof, 
despicable round of sordid cares and animal gratifications." 

A passage wliich occurs in the writer's appreciation of the 
peculiar character of Konian civilization, is profound and just: 



202 LITERARY CRITICISMS, [^Etat. 30. 

" He who sees no Divinity in the affairs of men, who recognizes no Prori- 
dential guidance of nations, will refer the peculiar manifestations of a people 
to organization, to institutions, to mere external and mechanical causes. But 
among a people who enjoy any considerable share of freedom, institutions and 
other external circumstances are rather the effects than the causes of national 
peculiarities. The truth lies in the middle, between the opposite extremes of 
the mechanical and dynamical theories, or rather is made up of both. Indi- 
vidual and national peculiarities are the compound results of inscrutable 
impulses arising in the mysterious depths of spiritual being, and of internal 
circumstances, acting and reacting in such a manner, that it is impossible to 
assign to each class of causes their intuitive shares in the product." 

His conception of the grand elements and laws by whose 
action history is evolved, is marked by the finest strength, and 
fearlessness, and truth. 

" 'Why the Omnipotent,'' he remarks, " has permitted the original perfection 
of his own workmanship to be overthrown, and what is the nature of that dis- 
turbing force which has brought discord, and with it death and sorrow, into 
the world, are questions which must return upon the thinking minds of each 
successive generation, in all their original perplexity, because they admit of 
no satisfactory answer in the present state of being. So far as the Divine 
counsels can be deciphered from the facts of history, nothing is clearer than 
that man was not destined for the tame and regular manifestation of a few 
genial impulses held in perfect equilibrium by the limiting properties of his 
nature, but rather for a vast, tempestuous existence, resulting from iho polarity 
of powerful passions and antagonistic tendencies. Everywhere, in the physical 
and moral world, we find strife and antagonism, inordinate activity of forces 
followed by the reaction of others which had been for a time repressed." 

In a similar spirit is a passage about the Crusades introductory 
to an acute and able summary of the benefits which they conferred 
on European society. It is as fine a specimen of fearless thought 
and noble feeling as we recollect to have met with : 

" Chivalry reached its perfection when to the poetry of love it added that 
poetry of devotion which gave rise to the Crusades. What avail the endless 
tirades upon the folly and absurdity of the Crusades ? Are the worship of 
gold, the enterprises of commercial ambition, the lust of territorial aggrandize- 
ment, which now embroil nations, a whit more respectable than the poetical 
devotion which carried the chivalry of Europe to the sepulchre of Christ ? 
Why suffer the enterprises of sordid and earth-born selfishness to pass with 
perhaps a gentle expression of disapprobation, and exhaust the vocabulary of 
contempt upon the offspring of great and generous emotions ? Xo doubt, that 
inundation of fiery valor which Europe poured upon Asia, was turbid enough 
with profligacy seeking to expiate a life of guilt by a martial pilgrimage to the 



^TAT. 30.] NOURSE'S LEGACIES OF THE PAST. 203 

cradle of religion, and with vague hopes of reckless adTcnturers to repair their 
fortunes and gratify their passions in the opulent and voluptuous East. What 
of all that ? Similar facts may be affirmed of every large body of men that 
ever assembled on earth ; the solemn homilies of conscientious and respectable 
persons upon the folly and wickedness of others, are to the last degree weari- 
some and unprofitable. It is not in this manner that the historical philosopher 
contemplates the great movements of society. The Crusaders were not so 
foolish ; and those wars have not been so barren of beneficial results as some 
short-sighted persons imagine. 

•' It is dif&cult to obtain a clear insight into the thoughts and feelings of 
those ' fervent days of old,' when religious faith, instead of being a moral 
probability floating in a medium of metaphysical abstraction, und patronized 
by politicians as an useful auxiliary to law in the preservation of social order, 
was a warm and life-like reality, glowing in the hearts, and living in the daily 
business of men, and afiFording the most powerful incentives to action. In 
modern times, the poetry of devotion has been so much sobered by motives 
belonging to the present state of being, that it is hard to tell whether the chief 
sources of otir prudential morality are in earth or heaven. Yet there is no 
reason why the self-complacent shrewdness of this rather barren and prosaic 
age of transition, should be particularly lavish of pity or contempt upon half- 
enlightened, but still glorious, manifestations of those high properties of otir 
nature, which distinguish us from the beasts that perish. The chivalric, like 
the heroic ages, exhibit striking contrasts of strong lights and deep shadows. 
The conduct of men who are guided by cool calculations of profit and loss, 
will in general have an even tenor, seldom sinking into crime, seldom rising 
into heroic virtue. But ages of faith, which are also ages of fervent and 
overmastering impulses, are productive of splendid virtues and dreadful crimes, 
and show many examples of those powerful but irregular natures which are 
great alike in their evil and their good. The Crusades were an universal 
sifting and shaking up of the chaotic elements of society. To contemporaries 
they may have appeared, as the French Eevolution did to persons now living, 
an aimless tempest of human passions. In such cases we observe nothing at 
first but the eddying of hosts, the shook of arms, the clouds of dust, and gar- 
ments rolled in blood. But when the uproar has ceased, and the clouds have 
rolled away, a new world is disclosed, and we find that many time-honored 
abuses, old institutions and inveterate prejudices have passed away forever." 

This is the spirit and the power in which great historical in- 
quiries should be approached. 

In the chapter entitled "Xight and Moniiug," Mr. Xourse 
traces with consummate ingenuity and ability, the progressive evo- 
lution of that various and complicated social system which is now 
illustrated in Europe. Starting from the period when, to use 
his o\\-u striking language, " that free and ethereal essence, which 
had hitherto bound Christian societies together, warming each 



204 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

heart with tire from heaven, began to crystalize into a church, 
with an organization strong enough to withstand the storms that 
were about to burst upon the empire, and shelter from their fury 
some remnants of ancient civilization," he proceeds to appreciate 
the effect of each great occurrence in the next fifteen hundred 
years, in developing those institutions and that liberty which now 
form the chracteristics of Europe. 

We must conclude our extracts at present by a few sentences 
respecting the influence of woman during the middle ages, in 
educating and refining society. 

" The remarks in our former discourse, in i-olation to the unobtrusiveness 
of the greatest and most durable power, apply with peculiar force to the con- 
tributions of woman to the progress of society. Even philosophic historians 
have been far from doing justice to female influence, because from the nature 
of the case, their attention is chieflj' devoted to the intrigues of courts, the 
movements of ai'mies, the doings of politicians, the bubbles and commotions 
of the surface of society. But kings, heroes, statesmen, were all children 
once ,• and no one need be told that in the quiet shades of domestic life we 
must look for the springs of that mighty stream which bears upon its troubled 
surface, warriors and statesmen, courts and armies, republics and dynasties, 
and all the multiform institutions and transactions of civil society. 

" The noblest civilization tends to bring the two sexes nearer together in 
regard to their moral and intellectual character. The^ highest order of genius 
has been justly said to combine the peculiarities of both sexes ; the vigorous 
understanding, the force of imagination, the energy of will, that distinguish 
the one, with the quick perception, the intuitive tact, the tenderness and 
sensibility of the othei-. . . Aside from speculation, the peculiar properties of 
woman's moral and intellectual structure, are precisely such as are adapted, 
whenever her social position commands respect, and favors the development 
of her powers, to smooth the asperities of man, to refine and elevate his senti- 
ments, and to entwine his rugged strength with the foliage and flowers of 
tenderness and fancy. There is nothing which so calls into action the finest 
feelings of his nature, as the sense of being leaned upon, and being looked up 
to as a guardian, by a being so graceful in her timidity, so beautiful in her 
helplessness, provided her virtue commands his respect; for, if she be not 
pure, if sie revere not herself, she may have the protection, but never the 
sincere homage, of chivalry; and the elegance which she diffuses over society, 
only renders vice more attractive by divesting it of its grossness." 

Extracts of this kind, however, convey no just notion of the 
great powers of expanded and sustained thought which this 
author exhibits ; but his exuberance of creative vigor frequently 
overflows into rich forms of beautiful conception, as pure and 
glittering as amber. 



LITEEAEY PORTRAITS 



GEORGE P. jVIORRIS. 

The distinction with which the name of General Morris is now 
associated in a permanent connection with what is least facti- 
tious or fugitive in American Art, is admitted and known ; 
but the class of young men of letters in this country, at present, 
can hardly appreciate the extent to which they, and the profes- 
sion to which they belong, are indebted to his animated exer- 
tions, his varied talents, his admirable resources of temper, 
during a period of twenty years, and at a time when the charac- 
ter of American litertature, both at home and abroad, was yet 
to be formed. The first great service which the literary taste 
of this country received, was rendered by Dennie ; a remarkable 
man ; qualified by nature and attainments to be a leader in new 
circumstances ; fit to take part in the formation of a national 
literature ; as a vindicator of independence in thought, able to 
establish freedom without disturbing the obligations of law ; as 
a conservative in taste, skilful to keep the tone of the great mo- 
dels with which his studies were familiar, without copying their 
style ; by both capacities successful in developing the one, un- 
changeable spirit of Art, under a new form and with new 
effects. In this' office of field-marshal of our native forces, 
General Morris succeeded him under increased advantages, in 
some respects with higher powers, in a different, and certainly 
a vastly more extended sphere of influence. The manifold and 
lasting benefits which, as Editor of " The Mirror," Mr. Morris con- 
ferred on art and artists of every kind, by his tact, his liberality, 
the superiority of his judgment, and the vigor of his abilities ; 
18 (205) 



206 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [iETAT. 28. 

by the perseverance and address with which he disciplined a 
corps of youthful writers iu the presence of a constant and heavy 
fire from the batteries of foreign criticism ; by the rare combina- 
tion, so valuable in dealing with the numerous aspirants in 
authorship with whom his position brought him in contact, of a 
quick, true eye to discern in the modesty of some nameless manu- 
script the future promises of a power hardly yet conscious of it- 
self, a discretion to guide by sound advice, and a generosity to 
aid with the most important kind of assistance; the fine and 
open temper which his example tended to inspire into the re- 
lations of literary men with one another throughout the land ; 
and more than all, perhaps, by the harmony and union, of such 
inappreciable value, especially in the beginning of national effort., 
between the several sister arts of writing, music, painting and 
dramatic exhibition, which the singular variety and discursiveness 
of his intellectual sympathies led him constantly to maintain and 
vindicate ; these, in the multiplicity of their operation, and the 
full power of their joint eifect, can be perfectly understood only 
by those who possessed a contemporaneous knowledge of the 
circumstances, and who, remembering the state of things at the 
commencement of the period alluded to, and observing what ex- 
isted at the end of it, are able to look back over the whole in- 
terval, and see to what influences and what persons the extra- 
ordinary change which has taken place, is to be referred. If, at 
this moment, the literary genius of America, renewed in youth, 
and quivering like the eagle's limbs with excess of vigor, seems 
about to make a new flight, from a higher vantage-ground, into 
loftier depths of airy distance, the capacity to take that flight 
must, to a great degree, be ascribed to those two persons whom 
we have named ; without whose services the brighter era which 
appears now to be dawning, might yet be distant and doubtful. 
Besides these particulars of past effort, which ought to make 
his countrymen love the reputation of the subject of this notice, 
we regret that our limits forbid us to speak at large of those 
more intimate qualities of personal value, which, in our judg- 
ment, form the genuine lustre of one who, admirable for other 
attainments, is to be imitated in these. 



^TAT. 28.] GEORGE P. -AIORRIS. 207 

To US it is an instinctive feeling that a wrong is done to the 
proper grandeur of our complex nature — that a violence is 
offered to the higher consciousness of our immortal being, — 
whenever an intellectual quality is extolled to the neglect of 
a moral one. Moral excellence is the most real genius ; and a 
temper to cope and calmly baffle the multitudinous assaults of 
the spiritual enmity of active life, is a talent which outshines all 
praise of mental endowments. Unhappily, the biography of lite- 
rary creators affords few occasions in which a feeling of this 
kind can be indulged and gratified : that sensibility of mental 
apprehension which is the fame of the author, is usually attended 
by a susceptibility of passionate impression which is the fate of 
the man ; and earth and sense delight to wreak their destructive 
vengeances upon the spiritual nature of him, of whose intellectual 
being they are the slaves and the sport. In the present instance, 
we are concerned with a character, — totus, teres, atque rotundus; 
which may be looked upon, from every side, with an equal satis- 
faction. Search the wide world over, and you shall not find 
among the literary men of any nation, one on whom the dignity 
of a free and manly spirit sits with a grace more native and fa- 
miliar,. — whose spontaneous sentiments have a truer tone of 
nobleness, — the course of whose usual feelings is more expanded 
and honorable, — whose acts, whether common and daily, or de- 
liberate and much-considered, are wont at all times to be more 
beautifully impressed with those marks of sincerity, of modesty, 
and of justice, which form the very seal of worth in conduct. 
Those jealousies, and littlenesses, and envyings, which prey upon 
the spirits of many men, as the vulture on the heart of the 
chained Prometheus, — and whose fierce besetment they who will 
be magnanimous, have to fight off, as one drives away the eagles 
from their prey, with voice and gestures — seem never to assail 
him. It is the happiness of his nature to have that only absolute 
deliverance from evil which is implied in being rendered in- 
sensil)le to temptation. While the duty which is laid upon us, in 
this paper, mainly is to open and set forth his poetic praises and 
claim the laurel for his literary merits ; when the crown of song 
is to be conferred upon him, we shall interpose to beg that the 



208 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 28. 

chaplet may be accompanied by some mark, or some inscription 
which shall declare, 

For the success of our special purpose, in this notice, which 
is to consider and make apparent the specific character which 
belongs to General Morris as a literary artist and a poetic 
creator, to explain his claims to that title which the common 
voice of the country has given to him, — of The Song-Writer of 
America — it would have probably been more judicious had we 
kept out of view the matters of Avhich we have just spoken. It 
is recorded of a Grecian painter, that having completed the 
picture of a sleeping nymph, he added on the foreground the 
figure of a satyr gazing in amazement upon her beauty ; but 
finding that the secondary form attracted universal praise, he 
erased it, as diverting applause from that which he desired to 
have regarded as the principal monument of his skill. There is 
in this anecdote a double wisdom ; the world is as little willing 
to yield to a twofold superiority as it is able to aj)preciate two 
distinct objects at once. 

In a review of literary reputations, perhaps nothing is fitted 
to raise more surprise than the obvious inequality in the extent 
and greatness of the labors to which an equal reward of fame 
has been allotted. The abounding energy and picturesque va- 
riety of Homer are illustrated in eight-and-forty books : the re- 
mains of Sappho might be written on the surface of a leaf of 
the laurus nobilis. Yet if the one expands before us with the 
magnificent extent, the diversified surface, the endless decorations 
of the earth itself, the other hangs on high, like a lone, clear 
star — small but intense. — flashing upon us through the night of 
ages, invested with circumstances of divinity not less unquestion- 
able than those that attend the venerable majesty of the Ancient 
of Song. The rich and roseate light that shines around the 
name of Mimnermus, is shed from some dozen or twenty lines : the 
immortality of Tyrtoeus rests upon a stanza or two, which have 
floated to us with their precious fi-eight, over the sea of centuries, 
and will float on. unsubmergible by all the waves of Time. The 



JEt.kt. 2S.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 209 

soul of Simoiiides lives to us in a single couplet ; but that is very 
stuff of Eternity, which neither fire will assoil, nor tempests 
peril, nor the wrath of years impair. The Infinite has no de- 
grees ; wherever the world sees in any human spirit the fire of 
the Everlasting, it bows with equal awe, whether that fire is dis- 
played by only an occasional flash, or by a prolonged. and dif- 
fusive blaze. There is a certain tone which, hear it when we 
may, and where we may, we know to be the accent of the gods : 
and whether its quality be shown in a single utterance, or its 
volume displayed in a thousand bursts of music, we surround 
the band of spirits whom we there detect in their mortal disguise, 
with equal ceremonies of respect and worship, hailing them 
alike as seraphs of a brighter sphere — sons of the morning. This 
is natural, and it is reasonable. Genius is not a degree of other 
qualities, nor is it a particular way or extent of displaying such 
qualities ; it is a faculty by itself; it is a manner, of which we 
may judge with the same certainty from one exhibition, as from 
many. The praise of a poet, therefore, is to be determined not 
by the nature of the work which he undertakes, but by the kind 
of mastery which he shows ; not by the breadth of surface over 
which he toils, but by the perfectness of the result which he at- 
tains. Mr. Wordsworth has vindicated the capacity of the son- 
net to be a casket of the richest gems of fame. We have no 
doubt that the song may give evidence of a genius which shall 
deserve to be ranked with the constructor of an epic. " Scorn 
not the Song." We would go so far, indeed, as to say that suc- 
cess in the song imports, necessarily, a more inborn and genuine 
gift of poetic conception, than the same proportion of success in 
other less simple modes of art. There are some sorts of compo- 
sition which may be wrought out of eager feeling and the foam 
of excited passions ; and which are therefore to a large extent 
within the reach of earnest sensibilities and an ambitious will ; 
others are the spontaneous outflow of the heart, to whose per- 
fection, turbulence and effort are fatal. Of the latter kind is the 
song. While the ode allows of exertion and strain, what is done 
in it must be accomplished by native and inherent strength. 
Speaking with that confidence which may not improperly be 
18* 



210 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 28. 

assumed by one who, having looked with some care at the foun- 
dations of the opinion Avhich he expresses, supposes himself able, 
if called upon by a denial, to furnish such demonstration of its 
truth as the nature of the matter allows of, we say that, in 
our judgment, there is no professed writer of songs, in this day, 
who has conceived the true character of this delicate and pecu- 
liar creation of art, with greater precision and justness than Mr. 
Morris, or been more felicitous than he in dealing with the 
subtle and multiform difficulties that beset its execution. It is 
well understood by those whose thoughts are used to be con- 
versant with the suggestions of a deeper analysis than belongs 
to popular criticism, that the forms of literary art are not indefinite 
in number, variable in their characteristics, or determined by the 
casual taste or arbitrary will of authors : they exist in nature ; 
they are dependent upon those fixed laws of intellectual being, 
of spiritual affection, and moral choice, which constitute the 
rationality of man. And the actual, positive merit of a poetical 
production — that real merit, which consists in native vitality, in 
inherent capacity to live — does not lie in the glitter or costli- 
ness of the decorations with which it is invested — nor in the 
force with which it is made to spring from the mind of its crea- 
tor into the minds of others. — nor yet in the scale of magnitude 
upon which the ideas belonging to the subject are illustrated in 
the work ; but rather, as we suppose, obviously, and in all cases, 
upon the integrity and truth with which the particular form 
that has been contemplated by the artist, is brought out, and the 
distinctness with which that one specific impression which is ap- 
propriate to it, is attained. This is the kind of excellence which 
we ascribe to Mr. Morris ; an excellence of a lofty order ; genuine, 
sincere, and incapable of question ; more valuable in this class 
of composition than in any other, because both more important 
and more difficult. For the song appears to us to possess a 
definiteness peculiarly jealous and exclusive ; to be less flexible 
in character and to permit less variety of tone than most other 
classes of composition. If a man shall say, " I will put more 
force into my song than your model allows, I will charge it with 
greater variety of impressions." it is well ; if he is skilful, he may 



^TAT. 28.1 GEORGE P. MORRTS. 



211 



make something ihat is very valuable. But in so far as his work 
is more than a song, it is not a song. In all works of Art — 
w^herever form is concerned — excess is error. 

The just notion and office of the modern song, as we think of 
it, is to be the embodiment and expression, in beauty, of some 
one of those sentiments or thoughts, gay, moral, pensive, joy- 
ous, or melancholy, which are as natural and appropriate, in 
particular circumstances, or to certain occasions, as the odor to 
the flower ; rising at such seasons, into the minds of all classes 
of persons, instinctive and unbidden, yet in obedience to some 
law of association which it is the gift of the poet to apprehend. 
Its graceful purpose is to exhibit an incident in the substance 
of an emotion, to communicate wisdom in the form of sentiment ; 
it is the refracted gleam of some wandering ray from the fair orb 
of moral truth, which, glancing against some occurrence in com- 
mon life, is surprised into a smile of quick-darting, many-colored 
beauty ; it is the airy ripple that is thrown up when the current 
of feeling in human hearts accidentally encounters the current 
of thought, and bubbles forth with a gentle fret of sparkling 
foam. Self-evolved, almost, and obedient in its development 
and shaping to some inward spirit of beauty which appears to 
possess and control its course, it might almost seem that, in the 
outgoing loveliness of such productions, sentiment, made sub- 
stantial in language, floated abroad in natural self-delivery ; as 
that heat which is not yet flame, gives itself forth in blue 
wreaths of vaporous grace, which unfold their delicateness for a 
moment upon the tranquil air, and then vanish away. It is 
not an artificial structure built up by intellect after a model 
foreshaped by fancy, or foreshadowed by the instincts of the 
passions ; it is a simple emotion, crystalled into beauty by 
passing for a moment through the cooler air of the mind ; it is 
merely an effluence of creative vigor ; a graceful feeling thick- 
ened into words. Its proper dwelling is in the atmosphere of 
the sentiments, not the passions ; it will not, indeed, repel the 
sympathy of deeper feelings, but knows them rather under the 
form of the flower that floats upon the surface of meditation, 
than of the deeper root that lies beneath its stream. And this 



212 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [Mtat. 28. 

is tlie grievous fault of nearly all Lord Byron's melodies; that 
he pierces too profoundly, and passes below the region of grace, 
charging his lyre with far more vehemence of passion than its 
slight strings are meant to bear. The beauty which belongs to 
this production, should be in the form of the thought rather 
than the fashion of the setting : that genuineness and simplicity 
of character which constitute almost its essence, are destroyed 
by any appearance of the cold artifices of construction, palpable 
springes set for our admiration, whereby the beginning is obvi- 
ously arranged in reference to a particular ending. This is the 
short-reaching power of Moore — guilty, by design, of that de- 
parture from simplicity, by which he fascinated one generation 
at the expense of being forgotten by another. The song, while 
it is general in its impression, should be particular in its occa- 
sion ; not an abstraction of the mind, but a definite feeling, 
special to some certain set of circumstances. Rising from out 
the surface of daily experience, like the watery issuings of a 
fountain, it throws itself upward for a moment, then descends 
in a soft, glittering shower to the level whence it rose. Herein 
resides the chief defect of Bayly's songs ; that they are too 
general and vague — a species of pattern songs — being embodi- 
ments of some general feeling, or reflection, but lacking that 
sufficient reference to some season or occurrence which would 
justify their appearing, and take away from them the aspect of 
pretension and display I 

Let us speak at greater length of Moore. He is a person of 
acknowledged brilliance and unquestionable ingenuity : he pos- 
sesses that fertility of invention and exhaustless play of fancy, 
which are the usual endowment of his countrymen, and which, 
in another field of display, have stamped upon the oratory of 
the language, the features of a national characteristic. But his 
taste is vicious, even to an advanced stage of disease ; and he 
farther corrupted it by indulging his youthful appetency upon 
the luscious banquets of those amatory poets, sophists, and 
letter-writers, who were engendered of the soft decay of Greek 
civility, and whom the scholar fears even to touch with a 
momentary attention. He must have studied the costume of the 



^TAT. 28.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 213 

heralds at a coronation : as his model of decorons elegance, 
he might seem to have had his eye upon the Lord Mayor's 
state-coach, to which type, in some of his works, he has certainly 
approached with singular felicity of imitation. Unhappily for 
the fate of his name in the hands of succeeding critics, he di- 
rected this superabundance of powers to a department of effort 
which enacts, before all other things, as an indispensable pre- 
requisite to anything like valuable success, a taste, keen, severe, 
relentless in rejection ; in which, judgment is more than force, 
and discretion better than wealth ; where, in the eye of a just 
criticism, barrenness is a paler fault than superfluity. He in- 
vested his talents in that cheaply-splendid finery of spurious 
feeling, that glittering varnish of unreal fancy, which made the 
fortune of his reputation in this age, but will assuredly play the 
bankrupt with it in the next. Those tricks of words — that clinking 
jugglery of sounds — those faded extravagances of " diamonds of 
thought," and "roses of feeling," of bowers and zephyrs of 
cupids — which once ravished the imagination of the youth 
of our land, — to us now are spangles looked at by daylight ; 
they are those strongly-scented flowers which enchant us at night, 
to disgust in the morning. Mr. Moore's conception of greatness 
does not consist in some one, simple, broad, and majestic effect, 
but, as Walpole described the old Versailles, in " a lumber of 
littleness." In short, Moore thought that he was elegant when 
in truth he was flaunting, and feared he might be Asiatic, 
while he was only Irish. 

The only satisfactory method of criticism is by means of 
clinical lectures ; and we feel regret that our limits do not suffer 
us — to any great degree — to illustrate what we deem the vigor- 
ous simplicity, and genuine grace of Mr. Morris, by that 
mode of exposition. We must introduce a few cases, however, 
to show what we have been meaning in the remarks which we 
made above, upon the proper character of the song. The ballad of 
" Woodman, Spare that Tree," — one of those accidents of genius 
which, however, never happen but to consummate artists — is so 
familiar to every mind and heart, as to resent citation. Take, 
then, "My Mother's Bible." We know of no similar production 



214 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [.^tat. 23. 

in a truer taste, in a purer style, or more distinctly marked with 
the character of a good school of composition. 

This book is all that's left me now ! — 

Tears will unbidden start — 
With faltering lip and throbbing brow, 

I press it to my heart. 
For many generations past, 

Here is our family tree ; 
My mother's hands this Bible clasp'd; 

She, dying, gave it me. 

Ah ! well do I remember those 

Whose names these records bear 
Who round the hearth-stone used to close 

After the evening prayer, 
And speak of what these pages said, 

In tones my heart would thrill ! 
Though they are with the silent dead, 

Here are they living still ! 

My father read this holy book 

To brothers, sisters dear; 
How calm was my poor mother's look, 

Who lean'd God's word to hear ! 
Her angel face — I see it yet ! 

What thronging memories come ! 
Again that little group is met 

Within the halls of home ! 

Thou truest friend man ever knew, 

Thy constancy I've tried; 
Where all were false I found thee true, 

My counsellor and guide. 
The mines of earth no treasures give 

That could this volume buy : 
In teaching me the way to live. 

It taught me how to die. 

Or take "We were Boys togetjier." In manly pathos, in ten- 
derness and truth, where shall it be excelled ? 

We were boys together. 

And never can forget 
The school-house on the heather. 

In childhood where we met — 



-^Etat. 2S.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 215 

The humble home, to memory dear ; 

Its sorrows and its joys, 
Where woke the transient smile or tear 

When you and I were boys. 

We were youths together. 

And castles built in air ; 
Your heart was like a feather. 

And mine weigh'd down with care. 
To you came wealth with manhood's prime, 

To me it brought alloys 
Foreshadow'd in the primrose time 

When you and I were boys. 

We're old men together; 

The friends we loved of yore. 
With leaves of autumn weather, 

Are gone forever more. 
How blest to age the impulse given — 

The hope time ne'er destroys — 
Which led our thoughts from earth to heaven. 

When you and I were boys ! 

" The Miniature" possesses the captivating elegance of 
Voiture. 

William was holding in his hand 

The likeness of his wife — 
Fresh as if touch'd by fairy wand. 

With beauty, grace and life. 
He almost thought it spoke — he gazed 

Upon the treasure still ; 
Absorb'd, delighted and amazed. 

He view'd the artist's skill. 

" This picture is yourself, dear Jane ; 
'Tis drawn to nature true ; 
I've kissed it o'er and o'er again. 
It is so much like you." 
"And has it kissed you back, my dear?" 

" Why — no — my love ?" said he. 
" Then, William, it is very clear, 
'Tis not at all like me .'" 

" Where Hudson's Wave" is a glorious burst of poetry, mod- 
ulated into refinement by the hand of a master. 



216 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 28. 

Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands 

Winds through the hills afar. 
Old Cronest like a monarch stands, 

Crown'd with a single star ! 
And there, amid the billowy swells 

Of rock-ribb'd, cloud-capt earth, 
My fair and gentle Ida dwells, 

A nymph of mountain birth. 

The snow-flake that the cliff receives, 

The diamonds of the showers, 
Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves, 

The sisterhood of flowers. 
Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze, 

Her purity define ; 
But Ida's dearer far than these 

To this fond breast of mine. 

My heart is on the hills. The shades 

Of night are on my brow : 
Ye pleasant haunts and quiet glades. 

My soul is with you now ! 
I bless the star-crown'd highlands where 

My Ida's footsteps roam — 
Oh ! for a falcon's wing to bear 

Me onward to my home. 

Where will you find a nautical song, seemingly more sponta- 
neous in its genial outbreak, really more careful in its construc- 
tion, than " Land-ho 1" 

Up, up with tie signal ! The land is in sight ! 

We'll be happy, if never again, boys, to-night ! 

The cold, cheerless ocean in safety we've passed. 

And the warm genial earth glads our vision at last. 

In the land of the stranger true hearts we shall find, 

To soothe us in absence of those left behind. 

Land ! — land-ho ! All hearts glow with joy at the sight ! 

We'll be happy, if never again, boys, to-night ! 

The signal is waving ! Till morn we'll remain, 

Then part in the hope to meet one day again 

Round the hearth-stone of homo in the land of our birth. 

The holiest spot on the face of the earth ! 

Dear country ! our thoughts are as constant to thee, 

As the steel to the star, or the stream to the sea. 

IIo ! — land-ho! We near it — we bound at the sight 

Then be happy, if never again, boys, to-night! 



iETAT. 28.] GEOEGE P. MORRIS. 21t 

The signal is answer'd ! The foam-sparkles rise 

Like tears from the fountain of joy to the eyes ! 

May rain-drops that fall from the storm-clouds of care. 

Melt away in the sun-beaming smiles of the fair ! 

One health, as chime gaily the nautical bells. 

To woman — God bless her ! — wherever she dwells ! 

The pilot's on board ! — and, thank Heaven, all's right ! 

So be happy, if never again, boys, to-night ! 

How full of the joyous madness of absolute independence, yet 
made harmonious by instinctive grace, is " Life in the West 1" 

Ho ! brothers — come hither and list to my story — 

Merry and brief will the narrative be : 
Here, like a monarch, I reign in my glory — 

Master am I, boys, of all that I see. 
Where once frown'd a forest a garden is smiling — 

The meadow and moorland are marshes no more; 
And there curls the smoke of my cottage, beguiling 

The children who cluster like grapes at the door. 
Then enter, boys ; cheerly, boys, enter and rest; 
The land of the heart is the land of the west. 
Oho, boys ! — oho, boys ! — oho ! 

Talk not of the town, boys — give me the broad prairie. 

Where man like the wind roams impulsive and free j 
Behold how its beautiful colors all vary. 

Like those of the clouds, or the deep-rolling sea. 
A life in the woods, boys, is even as changing ; 

With proud independence we season our cheer. 
And those who the world are for happiness ranging. 

Won't find it at all, if they don't find it here. 
Then enter, boys; cheerly, boys, enter and rest; 
I'll show you the life, boys, we live in the west. 
Oho, boys ! — oho, boys ! — oho ! 

Here, brothers, secure from all turmoil and danger. 

We reap what we sow, for the soil is our own ; 
We spread hospitality's board for the stranger. 

And care not a fig for the king on his throne. 
We never know want, for we live by our labor. 

And in it contentment and happiness find ; 
We do what we can for a friend or a neighbor, 

And die, boys, in peace and good-will to mankind. 
Then enter, boys ; cheerly, boys, enter and rest ; 
You know how we live, boys, and die in the west ! 
Oho, boys ! — oho, boys ! — oho ! 

19 



218 LITEKARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 28. 

That the same heart whose wild pulse is thrilled by the adventu- 
rous interests of the huntsman and the wanderer, can beat in 
unison with the gentlest truth of deep devotion, is shown in 
"When other Friends are round Thee." 

When other friends are round thee, 

And other hearts are thine, 
When other bays have crown'd thee, 

More fresh and green than mine. 
Then think how sad and lonely 

This doatiug heart will be, 
Which, while it throbs, throbs only, 

Beloved one, for thee ! 

Yet do not think I doubt thee, 

I know thy truth remains ; 
I would not live without thee, 

For all the world contains. 
Thou art the star that guides me 

Along life's changing sea ; 
And whate'er fate betides me. 

This heart still turns to thee. 

"I Love the Night" has the voluptuous elegance of the 
Spanish models. 

I love the night when the moon streams bright 

On flowers that drink the dew. 
When cascades shout as the stars peep out. 

From boundless fields of blue ; 
But dearer far than moon or star. 

Or flowers of gaudy hue, 
Or murmuring trills of mountain rills, 

I love, I love, love — you ! 

I love to stray at the close of day. 

Through groves of linden trees. 
When gushing notes from song-birds' throats, 

Are vocal in the breeze. 
I love the night — the glorious night ! 

AVhen hearts beat warm and true ; 
But far above the night I love, 

I love, I love, love — you ! 

Were we to meet the lines " Oh, Think of Me I" in an An- 
thology, we should suppose they were Suckling's — so admirably 
is the tone of feeling kept down to the limit of probable sincerity 



.Etat. 28.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 21S 

— which is a characteristic that the cavalier style of courting 
never loses. 

Oh, think of me, my own beloved, 

Whatever cares beset thee! 
And when thou hast the falsehood proved. 

Of those with smiles who met thee : 
While o'er the sea, think, love, of me, 

Who never can forget thee ; 
Let memory trace the trysting-i:)lace, 

Where I with tears regret thee. 

Bright as yon star, within my mind, 

A hand unseen hath set thee ; 
There hath thine image been enshrined, , 

Since first, dear love, I met thee; 
So in thy breast I fain would rest. 

If, haply, fate would let me — 
And live or die, wert thou but nigh, 

To love or to regret me ! 

" The Star of Love" might stand as a selected specimen of 
all that is most exquisite in the songs of the Trouveurs. 

The star of love now shines above, 

Cool zephyrs crisp the sea; 
Among the leaves the wind-harp weaves 

Its serenade for thee. 
The star, the breeze, the wave, the trees, 

Their minstrelsy unite. 
But all are drear till thou appear 

To decorate the night. 

The light of noon streams from the moon, 

Though with a milder ray; 
O'er hill and grove, like woman's love. 

It cheers us on our way. 
Thus all that's bright, the moon, the night. 

The heavens, the earth, the sea. 
Exert their powers to bless the hours 

We dedicate to thee. 

"The Seasons of Love" is a charming effusion of gay, yet 
thoughtful sentiment. 

The spring-time of love 

Is both happy and gay, 
For joy sprinkles blossoms 

And balm in our way ; 



220 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat, 2S. 

The sky, earth, and ocean 

In beauty repose, 
And all the bright future 

Is couleur de rose. 

The summer of love 

Is the bloom of the heart. 
When hill, grove, and valley 

Their music impart, ^ 
And the pure glow of heaven 

Is seen in fond eyes, 
As lakes show the rainbow 

That's hung in the skies. 

The autumn of love 

Is the season of cheer — 
Life's mild Indian Summer, 

The smile of the year ; 
Which comes when the golden 

Ripe harvest is stored. 
And yields its own blessings — 

Repose and reward. 

The winter of love 

Is the beam that we win 
While the storm scowls without, 

From the sunshine within. 
Love's reign is eternal, 

The heart is his throne, 
And he has all seasons 

Of life for his own. 

The song, "I Never Have Been False to Thee," is, of 
itself, sufficient to establish General Morris's fame as a great 
poet — as a potens magister affectuum — and as a literary creator 
of a high order. It is a thoroughly fresh and affective poem on 
a subject as hackneyed as the highway ; it is as deep as truth 
itself, yet light as the movement of a dance. 

I never have been false to thee ! 

The heart I gave thee still is thine; 
Though thou hast been untrue to me. 

And I no more may call thee mine ! 
I've loved, as woman ever loves, 

With constant soul in good or ill; 
Thou'st proved, as man too often proves, 

A rover — but I love thee still ! 



iETAT. 28.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 221 

Yet think not that my spirit stoops 

To bind thee captive in my train ! 
Love's not a flower, at eunset droops^ 

But smiles when comes her god again! 
Thy words, which fall unheeded now, 

Could once my heart-strings madly thrill ! 
Love's golden chain and burning vow 

Are broken — but I love thee still ! 

Once what a heaven of bliss was ours. 

When love dispell'd the clouds of care. 
And time went by with birds and flowers, 

AVhilo song and incense fiU'd the air ! 
The past is mine — the present thine — 

Should thoughts of me thy future fill. 
Think what a destiny is mine, 

To lose but love thee, false one, still ! 

We had almost forgotten, what the world will never forget, 
the matchless softness and transparent delicacy of " Near the 
Lake." Those lines, of themselves, unconsciously, conrt "the 
soft promoter of the poet's strain," and almost seem about to 
break into music. 

Near the lake where drooped the willow, 

Long time ago ! 
Where the rock threw back the billow. 

Brighter than snow ; 
Dwelt a maid, beloved and cherished, 

By high and low; 
But with autumn's leaf she perished. 

Long time ago ! 

Rock and tree and flowing water. 

Long time ago ! 
Bee and bird and blossom taught her 

Love's spell to know ! 
While to my fond words she listen'd. 

Murmuring low. 
Tenderly her dove-eyes glisten'd, 

Long time ago ! 

Mingled were our hearts forever ! 

Long time ago ! 
Can I now forget her ? Never ! 

No, lost one, no ! 
To her grave these tears are given, 
19* 



222 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 28. 

Ever to flow; 
She's the star I missed from heaven, 
Long time ago ! 

It is agreeable to find that, instead of being seduced into a 
false style by the excessive popularity which many of his songs 
have acquired, General Morris's later efforts are in a style even 
more truly classic than his earlier ones, and show a decided 
advance, both in power and ease. " The Rock of the Pilgrims," 
and the " Indian Songs," of which last we have room only for 
one verse, are a very clear evidence of this : 

A rock in the wilderness welcomed our sires, 

From bondage far over the dark-rolling sea , 
On that holy altar they kindled the fires, 

Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for thee. 
Thy blessings descended in sunshine and shower. 

Or rose from the soil that was sown by thy hand ; 
The mountain and valley rejoiced in thy power, 

And heaven encircled and smiled on the land. 

The Pilgrims of old an example have given 

Of mild resignation, devotion, and love. 
Which beams like a star in the blue vault of heaven ; 

A beacon-light hung in their mansion above. 
In church and cathedral we kneel in our prayer— 

Their temple and chapel were valley and hill — 
But God is the same in the aisle or the air. 

And He is the Rock that we lean upon still. 

BEFORE THE BATTLE. 

They come ! — be firm I In silence rally ! 

The long-knives our retreat have found ! 
Hark ! — their tramp is in the valley. 

And they hem the forest round ! 
The burthened boughs with pale scouts quiver. 

The echoing hills tumultuous ring. 
While across the eddying river 

Their barks, like foaming war-steeds, spring ! 
The bloodhounds darken land and water ! 
They come — like buffaloes for slaughter ! 

We would willingly go on with our extracts, as there are se- 
veral which have equal claims with these upon our notice, but — 



^TAT. 28.] GEORGE P. MORRIS. 223 

clauditejam rivos. Such are the compositions, original in styie, 
natural in spirit, beautiful with the charm of almost faultless ex- 
ecution, which may challenge for their author the title of the 
Laureate of America. 

The life that is devoted to letters — says Dr. Johnson — passes 
silently away and is but little diversified by events. The par- 
ticulars of General Morris's personal history are soon told. He 
was born in the second year of the present century. The bril- 
liance of some youthful efforts in connection with the daily press 
displayed his fitness to take a leading part in the literary action 
of the country; and accordingly, in 1822, he became the Editor 
of "The New York Mirror." The storm of financial embarrass- 
ment which, about the years 1837 and 1838, rode over the whole 
country, prostrating every interest, and wasting all classes, 
visited even the poet and the editor. The "New York Mirror" 
passed out of his hands; and in 1843, its existence came to an 
end. In 1844, " The New Mirror" was established by the original 
proprietor, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Willis ; and this has 
recently been changed into " The Evening Mirror," a daily gazette 
of much spirit, elegance, and popularity. " The Mirror Library," 
under the same control, presents far the best selection of belles- 
lettres that can be found in this country or in England. It is 
aboift to re-commence its issues under improved advantages. 
In the beginning of the present year (1845.. — Ed.), the professional 
corps of singers and musicians in New York, as a testimony of 
esteem to General Morris, gave him a complimentary concert — 
a valuable token of their respect — appropriate and deserved — 
which enabled the most distinguished persons in the city of his 
birth to exhibit, by their presence, the interest and regard which 
they had for him. It was understood that the profits of that 
concert had a vital connection with General Morris's continuing 
to be the possessor of the modest and beautiful seat of " Under 
Cliff," on the Hudson — the residence of his family — the birth- 
place of most of them, and the cherished home and seat of his 
affections. Upon that subject, it is not our warrant to speak ; 
nor indeed have we the power to speak with accuracy. Should 
it be as is reported, that a "damp" has "fallen around the path" 



214 LITKRAKY PORTRAITS. TirAT. 2S. 

of this sweet poet and amiable man, we are sore that the people 
of this nation will be prompt to dispel, by offers more truly to- 
Inntary than the " aids" and "• benevolences" of royal ages, all 
diseomfon from the eveniug of his days. and. " in recompense*' 
of many an hour of the purest pleasure, and many an abiding senti- 
ment of truth and goodness, for which they are his debtors, to 

'• GiT« lite tribute, Glcry need noi asi."* 

* XW eondvdias sentesces cf this shon sketch of **' The S«cg- Writer of 
Asetiea," vritt^ by 21r. W^ace in lS4o. as an office of pkaisore and a rolon- 
Uij oSoiBs of i«s*i^ ff^ o»B vkwH be affecdonately lored. leares & painfiil 
uterest m t gcpaet to &e gifted salgcet of it, whicb it is a higb gntifieatioa to 
he able is ISaS to di^pd. The great BMrit aad VBConnoa saecess of QeBual 
Monis's prcseat litaniy nteiprise, ** The Hoae Joumd,** irfaieh, vidi bis fiiud 
Mr. WiUis, he VBdeitoQk eterea jeois ago, soon after tte preeedimg : 
vritta, and «i& him has sisee contiBwd— sad the coastaat i 
p«bl^ked ''Soags," wabkd tibis g«Mn«s aaa to rise svccesfidlr i 
*'daap,' to vhieh Mr. Wallace ia ISia so delieatal j allades : and be has beea 
a a fall eq| ojta t of that iadqpeadeace so dear to aa 
yrt Bote dear, as &e revaid of his owa geaios aad his 

A soag is vriti^ Oat it bmj be saag : aad the ftapmiaBtj of Goieral Mor- 
ris's vritiags Tith sack ooaiposns as ^Kshop^ Horn, GiUet^ Kaigh^ Do 
Besnis, Wallace, aad vith artists like Bcahaa. MaUbiaa, Mrs. Wood, Jtmmj 
Liad, and odtos of later &Be, nay be i^nied to as a proof how essentially 
lyric is his geaias : aad hov certain tfmefore to eononand tibe appiaase of aa. 
tions. Mr. e, S. Horn dedbred Oat the poet laet him more &an halfway; that 
his liaes were always niiEacal, and might be said to sing tbrmfrlres. 
pronoaneed tins aathor^the bst lyrist (tf the agej;' 
fikedtoaag. Be said &at he had saag «T 




Canada aad ebewheia, he had been leqaoBted to repeat it tihrae and fbnr times 
at Oe same eiMeii. Indeed, few literaiy efbrts of oar time hare had an 
admnataonwhick has beea 80 fitde local or < 
as *-Xhe Soi^-Wntar erAmeriea''beioags to twol 
Aan it has cnrar heea hetoc **Toa a^ me," says a leeent Irtfeer from an 
SngjBsk geatlBmagi, now npni'wntiafe ia tike Hoase of Commons one of tiba 
mask aacaeat of Oe Sa^^ boiaaghs, ''whether I have seen Gen. Monii^ 
last sang, 'Jeaa^yMat^ of CkanyTaDey.' Ton eaa bardh- know, when yon 
pat sack a qne^oa, Oe place ke kas bailt himsdf in tibe hearts <^ all dasses 



Ea^and, and haro a dear old chair lyerarycircteia whiA kindly ft i tnd s 
are gathered; aad parenls aaile wi& pleaaare to see braOets and sistors join 
tkrrir Toiees in Oe eianing song, and tvise c!:-f«r l!::sse loving tkoida Ifco 
ftenicteEt of Oekaman heart. Itiszcn :eel Oat tke ckad of 



^TAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GKI.SWOLD. 



EUPUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 



Mankind, generally, are not predisposed to give any one 
credit for possessing, at the same time, great intellectual force 
and eminent personal disinterestedness. If it be not the law, it 

one's brain has a chair in such circles, and that the lore for the child passes in 
hundreds of hearts into love for its unseen parent. After all, what are all the 
throat- warblings in the world to one such heart-=ong as 'My Mother's Bible?' 
It possesses the true test of genius, touching with sympathy the human heart, 
equally in the palace and the cottage. As an instance of the effect of one of 
hia songs, I will mention a scene in the House of Commons — at which I was 
present. 

" It was just about the hour, near twelve, when the dandies turn in from The 
Coventry Club, or some Belgravian rout, when, except three or four of the first 
men in the House, no one would be endured, and no one is listened to, unless, 
perhaps, a buffo like CoL Sibthorp, or a Rabelasian wit like Henry Drummend, 
or a flashing hussar of debate like Osborne, who rushes in every sentence at 
some opposition foe and levels him with his lance. The hotir of twelve is 
death to bores. They dare not cross its threshold. At the back of the Whig 
benches an old man arose, taU and silvered. From his dress of top boots and 
drab breeches and blue coat with gilt buttons, one would have fancied he had 
been dug up from some reign of the Georges, had not the fresh bloom on his 
cheek, caught in many a hunting morning, and his hale, hearty look proclaimed 
' the fine, old English gentleman.' This was Caley of Yorkshire. At first the 
dandies stared, and were inclined to chastise such unusual audacity in in- 
vading an hotir sacred to Peel, Stanly, Russell, Gladstone, and D'IsraelL But 
somehow the genial, kindly presence of the man, and the good old garments he 
wore, to which even llaee young England softened, saved him, and the House 
relapsed into listlessness. But listlessness soon grew into interest when, after 
a most earnest and touching appeal to the Premier to save the old glory, and 
old customs and old peasantry of England, he repeated, with a manly, touching 
pathos, the song of 'Woodman, Spare that Tree.' I cannot weU describe the 
effect which these beautiful word?, which do honor to the head and heart of 
their author, produced. The House was perfectly still when the old man sat 
down. Sir Robert Peel, against one of whose measures Mr. Caley's appeal 
had been made, felt it, and when he rose his voice faltered. ' I admit,' he said, 
' the touching beauty of that ballad, but I deny its application to any measure 
of mine.' It was some time before the sensation subsided, hut after it did 80 
groups gathered around Osborne and iJ'Israeli, to listen to a personal descrip- 
tion of the author, who was familiar to them from the picturings of Willis and 
others. Morris is now as well known to many of tis as if we had looked into 
his kindly face, or felt the warm pressure of his hand." 

The striking incident at a fashionable concert in France is more recent and 
perhaps less well known : where, after this same ballad — which has made the 

u* 



226 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 31. 

is too often an untoward fact of this imperfect frame of ours, 
that vivid creative capacity is accompanied by an absorbing 
self-consciousness, which, like an elliptical mirror, concentrates 

tour of Europe, and been translated into as many languages as The Vatican 
can interpret — had been very efifectively sung by an artist of high reputation, 
a tall and elegant man, rising in the midst of the concert room, which was 
hushed into the stillness of emotion, and walking some distance up the pas- 
sage-way till he caught the singer's eye, addressed him, in the breathless in- 
terest of the house, — " And pray. Sir, can yon tell us if the woodman did spare 
that tree ?" The answer, " He did, Sir. I give you my honor," dispelled 
an anxiety which could not have been greater had it been real, and gave free 
breath to the delighted assembly. 

While the "Songs" of General Morris have given so much honor to the 
country abroad, and are undoubtedly the foundation upon which his perma- 
nent reputation will rest, "The Home Journal," whoso many thousand copies 
now carry the most engaging literature of our country to its extremest ends, 
has made his genius an article of weekly necessity at home, among all who 
love the arts, who aspire to be informed upon the selecter topics of fashionable 
interest, or vijto regard with attention that lighter literature of our country 
which exercises not the least important influence on its destinies. 

So fine an analysis of General Morris's special powers as a Song-Writer, has 
been lately given by an intelligent critic, that any notice of them, to be com- 
plete, should not fail to embrace it. 

"If there is any literary work," says Dr. Griswold in his "Poets and Poetry of 
America," "which calls for a special gift of nature, perhaps it is the song. In 
terms of a sounder theory I may say that its successful accomplishment, be- 
yond almost any other composition, demands an intelligent insight into the 
principles upon which its effect depends, and a capacity, if not to combine with 
imposing strength, yet to select with the nicest judgment. Other productions 
often gratify, long and highly, in spite of considerable defects, while the song, 
to succeed at all, must be nearly perfect. It implies a taste delicately skilled 
in the fine influencps of language. It has often shunned the diligence of men 
who have done greater things. Starting from some common perception, by 
almost a crystalline process of accretion it should gro>7 up into a poem. Its 
first note should find the hearer in sympathy with it and its last should leave 
him moved and wondering. Throughout, it must have an affinity to some one 
fixed idea. Its propriety is, not so much to give expression to a feeling exist- 
ing in the bosom of the author, as to reproduce that feeling in the heart of the 
listener: the tone of the composition ought, therefore, to be, as much as is pos- 
sible, below the force of the feeling which it would inspire. It should be simple, 
entire, and glowing. 

"The distinction and difficulty of the song are illustrated by the genius of 
Jonson, Marlowe, and Dryden; by the fame of Moore, and the iailure of 
Byron. Several of the songs of Morris, whether judged of by their snecess or by 
the application of any rules of criticism, are nearly faultless. They are in a 



2ETAT. SI.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 227 

upon a focus within its own compass all the lustre that it 
snatches from life and nature ; so that at last we come unhappily 
to doubt the power, if we do not perceive the infirmity. A 
writer, of the least questionable ability, if he be unlucky enough 
early to grow distinguished for literary philanthropy, for gener- 
ous zeal in bringing the productions of others to the light of 
popular approval, for patriotic devotedness to the honor of his 
country, as founded upon the works of his contemporaries, will 
assuredly be misunderstood, at least for a season. His readiness 
to do everything for others will be taken for an argument of in- 
capacity to do much for himself. But Time — in whose airy 
train, if passions and prejudices revel at the commencement, 
and false opinions crowd about the middle part, Justice ever 
walks slow and late, bringing up the close — will dispense a ret- 
ribution that is not by measure; and the reputation, which 

very chaste style of art. They have the simplicity which is the characteristic 
of the classic models, and the purity which was once deemed an indispensable 
quality in the lyric poet. They are marked by neatness of language j free 
from every thing affected, or finical ; a natural elegance of sentiment, and a 
correct moral purpose. Ilis best effusions have few marks of imitation. They 
are like each other; but no English song can be named from which in cha- 
racter and tone they are not different. — ' The Chieftain's Daughter' is an example 
of the narrative song in which the whole story is told in a few lines, without 
omission and without redundancy. ' When other Friends are round Thee ' is 
a beautiful expression of affection. 'Land IIo!' is an exceedingly spirited and 
joyous nautical piece; and in 'Near the Lake,' the very delicate effect which 
the author has contemplated, is attained with remarkable precision. 

" In sentiment, as in sound, there are certain natural melodies, which seem to 
be discovered rather than contrived, and which, as they are evolved from time 
to time by the felicity or skill of successive artists, are sure to be received with 
unbounded popularity. The higher and more elaborate productions of genius 
are best appreciated by the thoughtful analysis of a single critic : but the ap- 
propriate test of the merit of these simple, apparently almost spontaneous 
effusions, is the response which they meet with from the common heart of man. 
The melodies of Mozart and Auber doubtless enchanted their ears who first heard 
them played by the composers ; but we know them to be founded in the enduring 
truth of art, only because they have made themselves a home in the streets of 
every city of Europe and America, and after long experience, have been found 
to be among the natural formulas by which gaiety and melancholy express 
themselves in every rank and in every land. The song of ' Woodman, spare 
that Tree,' has touched one of those chords of pervading nature which frater- 
nize multitudes of differing nations." — Ed. 



228 LITEKARY PORTRAITS. [^Etat. 31 

began in self-oblivion, will nltimately be all the more potent foi 
having first been pure. 

To no man of our time is the literary character of this country 
under more honorable obligation, for confidence imparted at 
home, and consequence acquired abroad, than to the person 
whose name is placed at the beginning of this article. To no 
one will those writers, personally, almost without an exception, 
be so prompt to profess their indebtedness for manifold acts of 
disinterested benefit, rendered in a spirit, and with an ease and 
an ability, which made the intervention as valuable and as de- 
lightful to one party, as it was meritorious and graceful in the 
other. But the merit has been won at a great personal loss. 
Dr. Griswold would have been thought entitled to more respect 
as an author, if he had displayed less benevolence as an editor. 
The praise which is not claimed is slowly yielded ; and the ad- 
vocate who comes forward in the cause of another, is not sup- 
posed to have pretensions of his own. A candidate without 
rivalry, and a competitor unconscious of jealousy, is a character 
so new to literary history, that it is hardly to be expected that 
it should be at once appreciated. Dr. Griswold's critical sur- 
veys exhibit intellectual capacities of a very high order of sub- 
tlety and force, and a skill in composition singularly felicitous ; 
they leave to no one of his years in the country a title to take 
rank before him in energetic originality of thought and lan- 
guage ; and to the discriminating mind they demonstrate his 
ability, by the judicious concentration of effort upon some single 
subject of adequate scope, to rise to the first degree of excellence 
in any department. Nevertheless, had the exercise of these 
talents been dissociated from a generosity of purpose ; had they 
been directed to the construction of a mansion of repute for 
their possessor, out of the demolished houses of others' fame, in- 
stead of being employed to adorn and beautify the Pantheon of 
public and national distinction, by materials furnished from the 
artist's own treasures, doubtless the personal admiration won 
would have been far greater. The echoes of success would have 
borne to our ears the reverberations of a single name, instead of 
voicing the mingled glory of a throng, in which his praise who 



^TAT. 31.] RUF U S WILMOT GRISWOLD. 229 

waked the long response is scarce distinguishable. But we 
must not impair the dignity of an honorable reputation by regret 
or complaint. The qualities by which the general interest is 
aided, and the common good advanced, take their place, in every 
right judgment, so much above that class of powers by which 
individual eminence is vindicated; it is so much nobler and 
greater to diffuse the rays of renown than to appropriate them ; 
that we would counsel the friends of Dr. Griswold to value his 
reputation as the author of The Prose Writers of America, before 
the most fortunate endeavor to outrival the brightest subject of 
its page. 

Every American concerned for the literary celebrity of his 
country is bound to bear respect to the author of " The Poets 
and Poetry," and " The Prose Writers of America." The effect 
which these works have had, is obvious to the most careless ex- 
amination. We note a decided alteration since the date of their 
publication, not only in the increased deference with which our 
productions are regarded by British writers, but in the firmer 
countenance, the added energy, the deeper thoroughness of tone 
assumed and exerted by the press among us. Dr. Griswold at 
once challenged for his subject the very loftiest position, and did 
it in tones of such distinctness, decision and emphasis, as startled 
attention on every side, and implied not only great confidence 
in the correctness of his opinions, but something of moral 
heroism in braving the doubts and denials with which such claims 
were at first received. But he made good every pretension that 
he had advanced, and he is now followed by troops of persons, 
of whom not one would have dared to precede him, and but few 
would have been willing to stand beside him in the beginning. 
This presentation of the claims of American genius and accom- 
plishment in letters, under such advantages of aggregation, 
arrangement and illustration, as immediately to advance them 
into the line of equality with all our glories, is connected, en- 
duringly, with the name of Dr. Gi'iswold. From several causes, 
not very difficult to appreciate, it had happened that the lite- 
rary efforts of this country, in verse and prose alike, have been 
scattered, occasional, fragmentaiy, local ; impulsive more than 
20 



230 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [iExAT. 31. 

systematic ; the work of amateurs rather than professors. The 
wandering rays that struggled with "ineffectual beam," from a 
thousand divided sources, were now brought into focal unity, 
with an effect not merely augmented in degree, but unexpected 
in nature and kind. Si non singula placent, juncta juvmit. It 
was thus demonstrated that America had produced not only a 
poetry and romance, but a philosophy, a theology, a scholarship, 
and a criticism, fairly entitled to constitute a national school. 
Something more than research the most extensive, memory the 
readiest, discrimination the most just, and taste and tact the 
most delicate, were needed for this success. A "reconciling 
ray" of creative intelligence alone could give order, relation, 
composition and singleness of tone, to elements in many cases 
apparently impracticable. In hands less than masterly, the 
thing would have been a shapeless, discordant mass, without in- 
terest, and without effect. The combining eye, which caught 
the rich impression of the completed architecture, in the inex- 
pressive and inharmonious variety of the separate material, par- 
took of poetic ardor, and the skill which accomplished what the 
mind foresaw, was an artist faculty of not a common kind. 

Upon the subject of American literature, Dr. Griswold is an 
enthusiast, with all the qualities which render enthusiasm en- 
gaging, and even admirable ; generous, indefatigable, self-sacri- 
ficing, successful. Apparently, he takes as much pleasure in 
establishing another's distinction as he could feel if the victory 
were his own ; and he seems to feel that a personal triumph is 
won, whenever the lettered fame of the country is elevated. 
Under a light, variable, complying manner, he conceals strongly 
determined points of character. There is great intensity and 
continuance in his nature. Beneath a superficial excitability 
and impulsiveness, the instincts of his deeper being move firmly 
onward, undeviating and unresisting, through that sphere of 
mental interest to which he seems to have been predestinated. 
To inform himself of the history, peculiarities and achievements 
of American effort in every form, in the past and in the present, 
to assimilate all this information into union with his own thoughts 
and views, and to organize the whole into grand and imposing 



ffiTAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 231 

views of national power, is the occupation always going on, by 
a kind of involuntary process, almost in the unconscious opera- 
tion of this ever-active, ever-inquiring mind. This is the main 
pursuit of his life ; all else is the by-play of his powers. It is 
this which gives permanence, and consistency, and unity to his 
character, amid the infinite multiplicity of concerns which en- 
gage his less profound attention. This imparts dignity, and 
the aspect even of greatness, to a mental career which, unless 
steadied by such a controlling passion and principle of the 
thought, might be frittered and frivolized by the multitudinous 
petty excitements to which it is subject. Whatever "quick 
whirls and eddies of the mind" may gyrate and gurgle on the 
surface, the under-current ever moves composedly onward through 
its direct and natural channel, and in due time deposits in 
glittering masses the golden particles which it had swept along 
with it. 

With characteristics, and talents, and habits such as these, it 
is not surprising that his lore, on all matters connected with 
national history, biography, and literature, is immense. He is, 
without doubt, upon the whole American subject, the most 
learned authority in the world. For ourselves, we can say that 
there are certain departments in this field, more especially con- 
nected with Revolutionary personages and occurrences, which 
have been to us a kind of specialite in study ; but we have not 
yet found the topic upon which Dr. Griswold did not know all 
that we know, and a little more. The system upon which all 
this erudition is stored and distributed, in his recollection, is de- 
serving of imitation. There is nothing of the confusion, the 
chaotic agglomeration, which marks the lettered collections of 
the "helluo lihro7'wn ;'''' all is orderly, rational, connected. With 
great discretion he has especially cultivated that sort of infor- 
mation which consists, not so much in a treasury of facts laid 
away in the memory, as in familiarity with the sources of know- 
ledge. It has been his practice to cultivate that style of research 
which the acute good sense of Dr. Johnson commended in 
Gilbert Walmesly, and the advantages which all scholars are 
aware of — that where he does not possess the knowledge, he can 



233 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 31. 

at least tell where to find it. Ask Dr. Griswold as to an event 
or a character, somewhat recondite or controverted, and if he is 
not prepared to give you an exact and minute detail of the case, 
he will indicate, with promptness and precision, the avenues 
through which all the learning on the subject is to be reached ; 
he will refer you to a letter in the middle of one book, an anec- 
dote in the appendix of another, a disquisition buried in some 
series of a dozen volumes, by the combination of which a full 
view of what you are in search of will be reached ; and he will 
furnish a just estimate of the comparative reliability of different 
authorities, and all that apparatus of study which is so satis- 
factory to the inquirer. His mind, in this respect, might not 
so truly be called a book as an index, by means of which many 
books may be consulted. 

Doctor Griswold's life of mind is extraordinary. The energy 
and activity of his thoughts and efforts seem rather to be stimu- 
lated into higher force by the accumulation of toils. He cannot 
draw comfortable breath except in a whirlwind of occupation. 
To one who becomes slightly acquainted with him, and for the 
first time gets a glimpse into the many-roomed workshop of his 
mind, it is a matter of unfeigned astonishment to behold the all 
but limitless diversity of incompatible pursuits which this re- 
markable person is carrying on at the same time. As he be- 
comes more extensively observed, and more thoroughly known, 
this early surprise gives way to a more permanent admiration at 
the distinctness with which these several employments are fol- 
lowed, and the unpausing onwardness with which each is carried 
forward duly to its conclusion. The taking up of a new project 
is no reason with him for abandoning or slighting an old one. 
It is a characteristic with him to finish everything that he under- 
takes. He does not deal in unexecuted suggestions or untermi- 
nated enterprises ; every undertaking in his hands, soon sees its 
practical and final completion. Napoleon himself was not more 
habitually intent upon snatching the fruits of toil. Accord- 
ingly, in a brief life, he has accomplished a vast deal. As col- 
lector and editor, he has done in months what any other man 
would have required years for. As an original author, he has 



JEtat. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 233 

written thrice as much, perhaps, as any of his contemporaries. 
Mucli was transitory, and has passed away ; much remains, and 
will long be valued. Yet with all this prodigiousness of em- 
ployment, he always seems to be at leisure. In the morning, at 
noon, and in the evening, he is ready for anything that his 
friends may propose ; is always much at their service. A 
stranger who should be introduced to him, without a knowledge 
of his character or history, and should observe the eager force 
and earnest ability with which he threw himself into the trifles 
of the moment, would set him down, probably, for a gentleman 
of fortune and leisure, who lived chiefly in the drawing-room, 
whose mind habitually wanted occupation, had not enough for 
its energies, and was rather running to waste from what he him- 
self has described as the "luxuriance of intelligence unem- 
ployed." Such a one might be surprised to learn that his gay 
and careless acquaintance had just published a large octavo 
volume, after three months' consideration, of which a dozen 
people, under any division of labor, might have been in gestation 
for as many lustrums ; was carrying two or three more through 
the press ; a monthly magazine ; wrote' the literary articles of 
one or two journals, and devoted twelve hours every day to the 
preparation of a great biographical dictionary — the maximum 
opus of his life. 

It would be unjust to pass by the personal relation in which 
Dr. Griswold has always stood to the other authors of his 
country; the system of friendly assistance which he makes it 
his duty to maintain to all who, in any sort, may profit by his 
kindness. He seems to possess an ardent and chivalrous love 
for the literary fame of his countrymen. He is ever ready to 
give any assistance that may be required in bringing out their 
works ; and his acquaintance with the subject of publication in 
all its branches, and all its details, enables him to render aid 
that is of priceless value to the shy, nervous, secluded man of 
genius. " A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse," possess irresis- 
tible claims upon his philanthropy. If the time and talents of 
a skilful editor, who will labor graiuitoushj, in some benevolent 
undertaking toward the works of some defunct, are needed, Dr. 
20* 



284 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [Mtxt. 51. 

Griswold is counted upon with ready confidence. The case of 
the late Edgar Allen Poe is an illustration of this matter, very 
honorable to the subject of our notice. There was nothing in 
the private relations of the parties to render it at all natural or 
probable that Mr. Poe should have left a request that Dr. Gris- 
wold would be the editor of his writings ; but he knew the 
generous spirit and admirable capacity of the person whose re- 
gard he invoked, and felt assured that he would do in the best 
manner what probably no other would do at all. Services such 
as he is constantly rendering, give him a title to the gratitude, 
not merely of that large number of authors who have been im- 
mediately obliged by his courtesy, but of the country at large, 
which has derived from his efforts benefits which it knows not 
of, and which ought to admire abilities so unselfishly exerted.* 
No one living has conferred such important favors upon the 
whole class of American authors, prose and poetical ; and should 
he be withdrawn from the sphere which he fills with peculiar 
advantages, there is scarcely a considerable writer, from one 
end of the States to the other, who would not feel that he had 
sustained the loss of an invaluable ally. And it is not only his 
personal exertions that have thus been disinterestedly given to 
American letters, but his purse has ever been freely open for 
the promotion of the same class of interests. Many a struggling 
young adventurer in the fields of authorship has owed to his 
generous hand the means of prosecuting and attaining his favor- 
ite aims. But the grace of such acts consists in their secrecy, 
and as the author of them has never divulged them, we cannot 

* The writers of the country have not been unwilling to display their re- 
gard for him in ways the most suitable and graceful. Bayard Taylor dedicates 
to him his first book, "Ximena and other Poems," as "an expression of 
gratitude for the kind encouragement shown the author." The Rev. James 
Watson inscribes to him a volume of " Discourses, as the first fruits of a 
mental and moral culture for which the author is chiefly indebted to him." 
The lamented Mrs. Osgood addressed to him the splendid edition of her works 
as a " Souvenir of admiration for his genius, of respect for his generous cha- 
racter, and of gratitude for his valuable literary counsels ;" and we might 
quote perhaps a dozen similar tributes from C. F. Hoffman, W. H. C. Hosmer, 
and other authors, illustrating the same feelings and opinions. 



Mt\t. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRLSWOLD. 235 

venture to refer to such as have transpired to us from other 
sources. The younger, less-favored class of American, authors, 
will never have a warmer friend, or, to use an old word, without 
the invidious sense which of old it may have borne, a more liberal 
patron, than he of whom we write. 

The boast of heraldry, and the pomp of power, alike have 
vanished from an era of republican maxims ; yet the rational 
interest of the one, and the substantial value of the other, have 
survived the change of forms, and sentiments, and institutions. 
Nowhere are genealogies explored and esteemed more than 
among the descendants of the Puritans ; and New England, we 
believe, is the only community which exhibits a society, and a 
periodical journal, devoted to the single purpose of tracing and 
recording pedigrees. It is wise, and it is natural ; and like all 
of "Nature's Avisdom," it finds its vindication equally in the in- 
stincts of the feelings, and in the conclusions of lengthened ob- 
servation. Struck by an historic name, awaking associations 
with the fame of judges, governors, and other worthies of the 
republic, we made application to a member of the family, for 
some details upon the subject. He has politely responded to 
our call, with a greater profusion of lore than we shall at 
present communicate to the public. 

The family of Griswold^ — which has included many eminent 
persons in the annals of the colony and of the state of Connec- 
ticut — is descended from George Griswold, called, in his epitaph, 
Armiger, of Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, England, and for 
several years, during the life of his father, Francis Griswold, de- 
scribed as of Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, where he was married. 
Of the ancestors of George Griswold, several had been in Par- 
liament, and one, Philip Griswold (A. D. 1391 — 1460), was 
honorably distinguished in arms in the reigns of the Fifth and 
Sixth Henries. The sons of George Griswold, with a single 
exception, emigrated to New England. Edward, whose name 
appears for some reason to have been changed from Francis, 
was one of the first settlers of Windsor, in the year 1630. 
Matthew also established himself originally in the same place, 
but after marrying a daughter of the first Henry Wolcott, he 



236 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^Etat. 31. 

bought and occupied the place known as Black Hall, in Lyme, 
then Saybrook. Others of the family advanced farther into the 
interior, and are represented by the descendants of the settlers 
of Norwich, Killingworth, (a corruption of Kenilworth,) Gris- 
wold, and other towns of which they were the founders. Rufus 
Wilmot Griswold is of the ninth generation from George Gris- 
wold, of Kenilworth, in England ; and on the mother's side is 
descended in the eighth degree from Thomas Mayhew, the first 
Governor of Martha's Vineyard. He was born in Rutland 
county, Vermont, on the 15th of February, 1815. 

Much of the early life of Dr. Griswold was spent in voyaging 
about the world ; and before he was twenty years of age he had 
seen the most interesting portions of his own country, and of 
southern and central Europe. Relinquishing travel, which had 
grown distasteful from indulgence, he suddenly married, and 
entered upon the fascinating but dangerous career of a man of 
letters by profession. Quodcunque amat, valde amat, is the 
character of his temperament, and he pursued this exciting oc- 
cupation with earnest and enthusiastic assiduity. He had 
studied divinity, and has professed at all times to regard it as 
his vocation ; but " once a mortgage, always a mortgage" is as 
apphcable to the liens of authorship as to those of debts ; and 
after nine or ten years passed chiefly in journalism and literary 
creation, it is not probable that he will ever wholly abandon 
the press for the pulpit.* There is no well-authenticated in- 
stance, we believe, on record, of a man who, for his own or his 
father's sin, has once been " dipped in ink" of printers, either 
curing himself or being cured radically of that tatter of the 

* Mr. E. P. Whipple, probably the most thoroughly accomplished of all our 
critics, observes in a recent sketch of Dr. Griswold: "Ilis acquirements in 
theology are very extensive. In his doctrinal notions he is inflexibly orthodox, 
and entertains some dogmas of peculiar grimness. Those who have never 
disputed with him on ' fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,' can 
hardly form a conception of his innate force of character. On these subjects 
he is a sort of cross between Descartes and John Calvin. In theology he is 
all muscle and bone. His sermons are his finest compositions, and he delivers 
them from the pulpit with taste and eloquence." 



^TAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 23t 

love of approbation which the dusky immersion always leaves 
behind it. 

Dr. Griswold's first habits of writing were formed under the 
suggestive culture of an elder brother, Mr. Heman Griswold, a 
highly accomplished and much respected merchant of Troy, in 
whose house he passed the winter of 1830. From that period, 
his fifteenth year, he has been a practised writer ; though he 
considers himself as having produced nothing, befoi*e twenty- 
two, which he would now be willing to acknowledge. For a 
short time he turned his attention to politics, and conducted a 
political journal in the country. After thia he was associated 
with Mr. Horace Greeley, in editing " The New-Yorker," and 
with Park Benjamin and Epes Sargent in "The Brother Jona- 
than" and " The New World" — enterprises eminently successful, 
which influenced in Various respects, and in an important degree, 
the character of the literary and newspaper press. In 1842-3, 
he was the editor of "Graham's Magazine;" and by the at- 
traction of his name, and the liberal policy which he induced 
Mr. Graham to adopt, was enabled to bring into its list of con- 
tributors a better corps of writers, perhaps, than has ever before 
or since been boasted by such a work. Among these were 
Richard Henry Dana, Washington Allston, Cooper, Bryant, 
Longfellow, Hoffman, Willis, and others. While he was editor, 
the circulation of the Magazine increased from seventeen thou- 
sand to twenty-nine thousand. 

He has published a large number of volumes anonymously. 
One of these is a collection of his verses, and two others con- 
stitute a novel. He has also brought out anonymously, partly 
or entirely written by himself, six or eight works on history and 
biography, which, though they have satisfied the critics and the 
publishers, appear, from being unacknowledged, not to have 
satisfied their author. He has printed, at sundry times, seven 
discourses on subjects of history and philosophy, and a volume 
of sermons. In reviews, magazines and newspapers he has 
written largely ; enough to fill a dozen octavo volumes. In 
1844 he published "Curiosities of American Literature." We 
are indebted to him, moreover, for an edition of The Prose 



238 LITEKARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 31. 

Works of Milton, preceded by an eloquent and valuable Life, 
published in 1846. This was the first American reprint of Mil- 
ton's prose, and was a voluntary contribution by the editor to 
the fortunes of a worthy and interesting man of genius, the Rev. 
Herman Hooker, D. D., then struggling to establish himself as 
a publisher, and now well known as one of the most liberal and 
extensive in Philadelphia. 

Dr. Griswold's position as a man of letters, however, is chiefly 
owing to his biographies and literary histories and disquisitions, 
in " The Poets and Poetry of America," 1842 ; " The Poets and 
Poetry of England in the Nineteenth Century," 1844; "The 
Prose Writers of America," 1846, and "The Female Poets of 
America," 1848. 

For the difficult office of determining, and representing and 
portraying the respective merits of the authors of America, in 
which he has risen to an easy supremacy, and which now by 
common consent has been delegated to his hands, he undoubt- 
edly has many rare qualifications. The mental attribute which 
he possesses in the most distinguishing degree, and to which his 
success is largely owing, is judgment. To say that he excels by 
that attribute is to award perhaps the highest praise that could 
be bestowed. The loftiest and rarest quality of the mind is 
judgment. It is above invention ; it is beyond eloquence ; it 
is more than logic. In every employment and every condition 
of life, private and public, deliberative and executive, the as- 
cendancy of judgment over talent, wit, passion, imagination, 
learning, is evinced at once by the rarity of the endowment, and 
by the superiority which it is certain to confer upon its pos- 
sessor. As a comparative critic, his opinions are always entitled 
to weight. Sensitive to the finest indications of literary pro- 
mise ; apt to detect essential merit, under whatever guise of 
oddity, or affectation, or bad taste ; acute in perception, and 
comprehensive in sympathy ; he holds aloft, firmly and steadily, 
the scale of just decision, and reports the result without prepos- 
session and without timidity. He possesses a rapid and sure 
coup iVccil. He surveys the merits of a volume with a scrutiny 
as piercing as it is brief, and arrives promptly at a result which 



iBTAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 239 

will commonly be found to stand the test of prolonged examina- 
tion. His sagacity has been so often displayed and approved, 
that there is probably no one among us whose opinion on a 
question of literary merit would have greater influence with the 
judicious minds of the country. His shrewdness in prognosti- 
cating the popular taste is not less acute, and his perception 
of what is likely to be successful is as accurate as his appre- 
ciation of what is really meritorious. 

The literary abilities displayed in the original portion of these 
works are entitled to very high rank, and are undoubtedly the 
sufficient cause of their popularity and permanence. Dr. Gris- 
wold's style is fresh, brilliant, delicate, perhaps over-delicate, 
but never feeble, and rarely morbid. With unerring accuracy, 
he always indicates the strong points of his subject ; yet he in- 
dicates rather than seizes them. The outlines of truth are 
always traced with nicety and precision ; yet are they traced 
rather than channelled. His coloring is refined, soft, suggestive; 
dealing in half tints, or mixed hues, more usually than in simple 
and contrasted colors. His perceptions are keenly intelligent, 
and full of vitality and vividness ; but they are too mercurial, 
fugitive and hasty ; they want fixity, persistency and prolonga- 
tion. He touches some rich element of truth or beauty, but he 
does not linger upon it to develop and unfold its deep and full 
resources ; he merely touches it, and is off in search of some re- 
mote conception, which he will strike and bound away from, 
like a glancing sunbeam. A discussion by him, therefore, is a 
series of gentle and delightful flashes, not a steady and prolonged 
blaze. The fault lies more in the school than in the performer. 
If he uses water-colors rather than oils, it is because the style 
is in mode, and not because the genius of the artist could not 
glow upon canvas as well as glitter upon paper. 

But moral qualities of a very unusual and very elevated sort 
were needed for an undertaking like the one which we speak 
of, and it is here that Dr. Griswold's character rises to excel- 
lence. From partiality, from prejudice, from the bias of anger 
and the warp of affection, his nature seems to be wholly free. A 
writer so void of literary jealousy never was created upon the 



240 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 31. 

earth. He comes to his work, too, without any of those in- 
veterate predilections or antipathies of taste which most men, 
as highly educated, contract. His views are not moulded in 
the forms of any systems, classes, or modes of criticism. His 
candor, sincerity, and utter fearlessness in avowing his genuine 
convictions are of inestimable value ; and there is not only a per- 
fect honesty in his mind, but a thorough freedom even from 
unintended predispositions and unconscious obliquities. Even 
where he cannot enjoy he appreciates, and he points out and 
expounds, for the participation of others, that which perhaps to 
himself may afford no pleasure. With some of the people in 
these volumes, his relations are those of affectionate intimacy ; 
with others they are decidedly hostile ; yet cavil itself might be 
defied to show an instance in which he has overvalued the merits 
of a friend or done unfairness to the titles of an enemy. 

But while we affirm that the author of these volumes has dis- 
played in them remarkable qualities of mind and accomplish- 
ment, we admit at the same time that what he has yet done is 
not worthy of the capacity which he certainly possesses. Our 
settled judgment is, that Dr. Griswold is a man of very superior 
and uncommon talents, and that he is destined to achieve much 
that shall be far beyond the line of his heretofore endeavors. 
We consider ourselves to be accurately acquainted with his 
nature ; we have seen him closely at sundry times, and in various 
emergencies ; with a severe, rather than a partial eye, we have 
explored and measured a character which interested our scrutiny. 
We are satisfied that neither the public nor Dr. Griswold him- 
self has formed a just and adequate appreciation of the original 
and commanding abilities which he has. If opinion has fallen 
below his performances, they again are below his powers. His 
own great infirmity — if so interesting a peculiarity may thus be 
called — consists in a want of mental self-reliance ; an absence 
of deep, broad confidence in his own inherent strength. And 
that perhaps has betrayed the judgment of the public ; for the 
latter is usually not disposed to take a man at a higher rate 
than he asks for himself. The community recognizes him as an 
acute, searching, and correct critic ; as a profound bibliographer 



^TAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GKISWOLD. 241 

and annalist ; and as master of a bright, pointed, and discursive 
style, light enough to lend grace to the airiest topics, and 
vigorous enough to dash at the weightiest. Dr. Griswold is 
more than all that. He is a man of genius ; abounding in the 
resources of inventive thought ; gifted, evidently and copiously, 
with "the vision and the faculty divine," which give to the 
world more than they gain from it, and glorify all that they 
perceive. 

There is a class of minds, whose dynamical condition is not 
quite accordant with their statical condition ; who, in what they 
do, never perfectly represent what they are. Studied in them- 
selves, they interest and impress ; followed in their works, they 
disappoint. Endowed, unmistakably, with the characteristics 
of superiority, whenever they put themselves in action, some 
unlucky element mixes itself up with the operation, some trick 
of weakness displays itself, some false bias, some fatal affinity 
comes athwart the effort, to make it miscarry, and the movement 
which commenced from genius concludes in commonplace. The 
fault lies rather in the temperament than in the talent. 

In Dr. Griswold's case, the misfortune, hitherto, has been that 
his interest in literary subjects has been so irritable, and his 
energy sprang with such instantness to seize every scheme which 
flashed before him, that the strong and firm capacities of his in- 
tellectual being have not had opportunity calmly and consistently 
to develop themselves. But within and beneath the volatile 
curiosity which is engrossed by externality, and almost entirely 
detached from it, is a deep, subtle, intensely-vital sensibility, 
which is a fund of creative affluence, and which, when fully 
worked out by the owner, will yield magnificent results. Sepa- 
rated from the electrical excitability of the upper and outer 
surface of the character, there lies a large substratum, whose 
action possesses a galvanic power and exhaustlessness. Hitherto, 
he seems not to have been able to master, and get the manage- 
ment and use of his genius. With the power, he possesses much 
of the impatience of that nervous temperament, which, when 
controlled, is inspiration and energy, but when unsubjected, is 
distraction and weakness. Time, which sometimes builds up a 
21 



242 LITERARY PORTRAITS. [^tat. 31. 

character, by a process of breaking down its infirmities, will 
advance this person into a higher sphere of effort and distinction. 
When he has worked out and off the too fertile alluvian, whose 
rapid fertility has misled him as to the true wealth of his own 
being, he will discern the genuine treasures with which nature 
has endowed him, and will address himself to the duty which 
rests upon the depository of such resources. Of late, we have 
witnessed a decided increase in the force and freedom with 
which his native inspiration of thought throws itself abroad. 
What a profound, complete and exquisite estimate of the cha- 
racter of Poe, is that which has recently been copied through 
the papers ! Yet it was thrown off within a few hours after the 
intelligence of his death reached the city by telegraph. 

Dr. Griswold possesses remarkable powers of conversation. 
At a dinner-table of literary men, and men of the world, few 
will equal him in the original, rapid, brilliant flow of his remarks. 
Such a scene is well suited to display the variety of his powers, 
and almost unlimited resources of his information. When ani- 
mated by the presence of a company which commands his respect, 
and kindles his ambition, he seems to rise to a higher grade of 
faculties, to be gifted with new powers of memory, and to be 
furnished with unfailing supplies of appropriate and eloquent 
language. At such times, his discourse has the readiness, the 
fluency, and the correctness of written composition. With a 
mind quickly susceptible to every suggestion of enlightened 
curiosity, he catches any topic which you may present, glances 
with swift yet natural transition from the thing before him to 
something a thousand leagues away from him ; enters, if invited, 
upon a critical discussion of some doubtful and difficult subject 
in literary history, gives you new, particular, and exact views 
of it ; or discusses the topics of the day with a vivid interest, 
and such interior knowledge as might seem attainable only by 
one habitually behind the scenes in all places. At the least, he 
always keeps his company awake, and if a little given to paradox, 
he is not the less on that account a very lively and very agree- 
able companion. • 

His social virtues are excellent. He is a firm, devoted friend. 



iETAT. 31.] RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD. 243 

He will go tlirongli fire and water to serve those whom he re- 
spects and values. As an enemy, he is dignified and not at all 
vindictive. In many instances he has treated with noble mag- 
nanimity, those who did him grievous wrong. When the 
confidence of his mind is given, he displays a chivalrous fidelity 
and loyalty. As The Quarterly once said of Dr. Parr, he would 
never think of cutting an old friend merely because he happened 
to be going to Botany Bay. When the town lays a man down. 
Dr. Griswold is disposed to take him up with increased ardor. 
He has a sort of Coriolanus-passion for unpopularity in a good 
cause. These are the peculiarities of a noble nature ; and if 
they provoke the impertinence of the canaille of scribblers, they 
attract and interest the sympathies of gentlemen., 



FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. 

[This and the remaining series bearing the same title, are fragments. They 
were written in 1837, and designed as contributions to a work which a young 
college friend of the author had in contemplation. In reference to some ob- 
servations in them, it must be remembered that they belong to a date nearly 
twenty years ago : although it may not be necessary, for any evidence of im- 
maturity that they exhibit, to remark that they are the production of a boy just 
then twenty years old. — Ed.] 



A DIALOGUE BY THE SEA. 

The- Ocean — Moral Reflections — Disquisition upon Pope — Pope and Byron 
Contrasted — Nature not always best described by those most familiar 
with her. 

As budding branches round a tree, — 

Thoughts cling, with feelings fraught, 
Around the silence of the sea, 

Itself a feeling thought.— Meade. 

The sun had just set, and the evening breeze was freshening 
from the waters, when I went out to pay my respects to the 
ocean. Upon the whole, perhaps, I wouki as lief have gone 
alone, but encountering accidentally on my way a person whom 
I had formerly known well and esteemed very highly, I pro- 
posed to him to join my ramble. He assented and we went 
forward together. 

Robert Courteney was one of my earliest acquaintances at 
school, and without any very tender feelings upon either side, there 
existed a tolerably warm friendship between us during the whole 
period of our connection as fellow-students. From some poetical 
compositions of his which I had seen, the production of his 
21* (245) 



246 FRAGxMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^taT. 20. 

youngest years, I had formed a high opinion of his genius ; and 
I was accustomed to think of him, when in subsequent days my 
memory recurred to our former acquaintance, as one who, if oc- 
casion were propitious, would probably be distinguished in after 
life. He was one of those persons that we occasionally meet 
with, who seem formed for pre-eminence, and to have that 
pre-eminence yielded by all ; one whose frank and cordial cha- 
racter excited so warm a personal regard and interest, that in 
admitting or asserting his claims to superiority, each seemed to 
be gratifying his own private pride. He was undoubtedly the 
most admired of all who were at the school while I remained 
there ; and his perfectly good temper and constant readiness to 
engage in amusement rendered him also the most popular. To 
tasks requiring either original genius, or acquired learning, he 
seemed equally fitted ; he appeared to reach by a certain instinct 
of mind, that familiarity with difficult and unusual subjects, 
M'hich others by the most plodding diligence, less successfully 
attained. With decided and unquestionable poetical powers, 
he united none of that moodiness of feeling and that lawlessness 
of passion, which the history of Lord Byron, and the theories 
of Mr. Moore, have taught the world to consider indispensable 
attributes of the poetical character. If the practice of one 
member of a profession could have justified a doubt of the 
necessity of those qualities which are usually demanded from 
the rest, I might have believed from the evidence which he 
afforded me, that one might still be a bard without ceasing to 
be a man of honor, of principle, and of decency, and that, after 
all, there was no such inevitable divorcement between the 
writing of verses and the performance of the reasonable duties 
of life. 

We presently reached a retired pai't of the beach, where the 
broad expanse of the waters extended before the eye in all their 
silent majesty. The sentinel surges gleamed far along the 
shore like a white-plumed triple line of soldiers, to guard the 
rest of the deep. 

"It is a glad and glorious pastime to the spirit," said my 
companion, " to look upon this type and token of Almighty 



^TAT. 20.] THE OCEAN. 241 

power — to wrestle with the living thoughts which dwell like 
things amid the stir and strife of these eternal waters — to en- 
counter the breathlessness of awe which comes upon the soul as 
we inhale at a glance the vastness of the scene. Upon the face 
of the deep, the spirit of eternity still is brooding : as we pause 
before this wide unbarriered space, and our naked mind stands 
bold against the unveiled, eternal universe, a silent thought of 
homage swells through the endless space ; and that thought is 
God. The ocean is the material image of the Almighty. What 
attribute of Deity is not here substantial ? Power, of an infinite 
fulness; — beauty, of that particular pervadingness of essence, 
that rain and tempest, and the winds evolve and not efface it ; — 
life, abstract and indestructible, that never wearies and that never 
wastes — whose days know not repose, and upon whose bosom 
the cloud of nightly slumber never weighs. If the dancing 
water-brook should cease to chant his praises who inspired its 
gladness, — or if the infuriate storm-blast, as it gnashes through 
the forest, should burst from its bands, and disown its Maker ; — 
if men should ever gaze upon the western sun, and forget whose 
countenance its brightness mirrors, or rest upon the mountain 
turf, nor own from whose omnipotence the strength of the hills 
has sprung ; — if the knowledge of the Infinite One shall ever 
pass away from the earth, the roar of the ocean will thunder it 
back. It was the sublime intention of Nicholas Ferrar that a 
perpetual chant or solemn service of music should be established 
at Little Gidding, to be sustained by generation after generation, 
and continued to the end of time without the interruption of a 
naoment. He wished that, whatever might be the condition of 
men or the character of the times, the voice of praise might ever 
be ascending ; that it should rise amid the roar of contest, like 
a smiling lotus through a tangled ruin, and be the blended har- 
mony of all the thoughts of peace ; that the ancestor and his 
descendant might unite in the same song of thanksgiving, and 
century be bound to century by an all-embracing stream of wor- 
ship. "What the saint designed, the sea performs. There are 
times perhaps in which from human lips throughout the broad 
extent of the earth, no sound of prayer or praise is heard ; but 



248 FRAGMENTAL LITEltARY Dr^JylllSITIONS. [^tat. 20. 

Ilie listening seraph who looks out from the windows of heaven, 
hears the organ of the waters peal everlastingly. It is not 
without an influence which may be termed holy, — for its begin- 
ning-is fear and its effect is cleansing, — that we muse within this 
great cathedral of the sky-roofed deep. When first seen by 
man, it gives him a thought and a disturbance which, though 
nothing can have ever before started such emotions within him, 
seem strangely familiar to his feelings. And when we claim in- 
stinctive brotherhood with that which stretches back, like a 
broad sheet of light, to the first moment that the gush of sun- 
beams flowed down upon the waves, and forwards till the depth 
of the heavens shall be opened, we realize one of those moments 
of existence in which man feels his immortality and trembles at 
it. There are thoughts of mystery and dreams of magic floating 
around this scene ; and there are those who have feasted on 
them till they have become maddened, and their life has turned 
to parching thirst for the fulness of these unearthly sentiments. 
But such thoughts are the food of heaven ; and while I would 
labor for their recognition as the proof of heaven, I would post- 
pone their enjoyment to another life, and abide in hope till the 
veil of the flesh which dims them, is withdrawn." 

"There are," said I, "many faculties of the heart whose true 
sphere of exercise is not in this world, and which bear in the 
fact of their being, unequivocal testimony that the intellectual 
frame wherein they are lodged, is destined for employment in 
another field of existence. And you have indicated truly the 
use which should be made of them: we should question them 
of their secret, elicit from them the truth which they have Co 
impart, and then dismiss them to be more fully developed in the 
due revolution of time. And I cannot help thinking that much 
of the scheme of practical Christianity has the same prospective 
reference. We do wrong in supposing that to the earth only, 
or even chiefly, is confined the application of the requisitions 
of the Scriptures ; that this globe is the only acting theatre of 
man, and that the future is but a scene of calm and impassive 
enjoyment. Our preachers err in limiting to this small arena a 
struggle and an endeavor which will last through eternity, — in 



^TAT. 20.] MORAL REFLECTIONS. 249 

confining within mundane limits, a mystery which fills immensity. 
Instead of a blessing to man it were a mockery of his helpless- 
ness, to expect him to attain the full measure of that perfection, 
than which no more belongs to consummate purity : to demand 
of him to familiarize to his bosom and to expound by his con- 
duct a system before whose unfathomable obscurity angel and 
archangel bow in humility ; to comprehend which, cherubic 
wisdom must pray for added intelligence ; to fulfil which, sera- 
phic ardor is not too sufficient. My opinion is, that those 
commands which are enjoined upon us here, are intended in 
their completeness to apply to our conduct in future worlds, 
when by cumulative energy through successive stages we shall 
arrive at a moral vigor in some measure adequate to the task. 
And in the very mode of the exposition of these matters in the 
Scriptures, I read a confirmation of this opinion ; for the doc- 
trine of faith is therein fully and satisfactorily laid open, but the 
precepts of practice are imperfectly and in many cases impracti- 
cably developed ; giving glimpses, as it were, of that complete 
scheme, whose revelation is reserved for other spheres. For 
spiritual existence in the great archipelago of worlds that fills 
the ocean of infinity is not independent, but successive, — death 
being but a ' a sleep and a forgetting,' — birth, an awaking with 
extended power. The great sacrifice which was exhibited in 
our own globe two thousand years ago, believe me, was not 
confined to it. It was a divine immolation for total sin on the 
great altar of the universe, and its manifestation was simulta- 
neous throughout the whole array of planets ; to each there was 
a darkening of the sun ; in each a rending of the veil in an old 
temple of superstition. Those who have been cast on these 
shores prior to the revelation of atonement, will learn the heal- 
ing truth in some future abode of their souls. It would require 
a mighty argument to convince me, that I have not lived before 
this ; it would require an almighty one to persuade me, that I 
shall not live hereafter. Meanwhile, whatever may be our 
future lot, there are incumbent upon us, here, momentous duties 
as members of society. Let us, therefore, secure of the develop- 
ments of future time, lay aside the pursuit of these unprofitable 



250 FEAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat: 20. 

epeculations which the contemplation of nature forces on our 
miud, and, girding ourselves to the task before us, actively 
meet the exigencies of life, and calmly 'wait the great teacher, 
Death.'" 

"I have always consented," said Courteney, "to the maxim 
of the great moral poet, that the proper study of mankind is 
man : and I hold that communion with nature is only valuable 
to freshen and relieve the spirit, and to strengthen the heart to 
pursue the study. Deeply, as from long acquaintance, I am 
attached to the solitary haunts where nature reveals herself to 
her votaries in majestic loveliness, and familiar as I am with 
the charms of those fair spirits who preside over lake, and 
stream, and mountain, I must still, in the sobriety of reasoning 
judgment, confess that those poets, who, like Shelley and 
Hemans, linger forever beneath the cope of air, and weave not 
one valuable moral reflection, not one maxim of prudence, 
among their verses, are not my most cherished favorites. The 
light which they dispense may be 'light from Heaven,' but it is 
not for Earth : it is all thrown upon the by-paths of romance 
and the groves of sentiment, not a ray illuminating the high 
road of human conduct, — that path of action which, while we 
are men, must be the chief field of our footsteps. They render 
that the essence which, in reason, is but the accident of life ; 
they make that the substance of our business which should, in 
truth, be but the gilding of our leisure. It is indeed of advan- 
tage to retire occasionally from pursuing the reality of virtue to 
dally with its romance ; but these writers make the argument 
of the volume of what affords but matter for a parenthesis. 
When the recess of evening brings repose from labor, the reve- 
ries of the fiz-eside are in place ; but it is worse than idle to 
linger dreaming in the twilight of the valleys, when midday 
duties await us on the plain." 

"You are of course, then," said I, "an admirer of Pope ?" 

" So much so that, with the exception of a few of his avowed 

followers, who have caught something of his spirit, I question 

whether there has been any true poetry since his days. Ah ! 

ray friend, when I see the age about to crown with the title of 



^TAT. 20.] POPE. 251 

Immortal, a poet whose greatest productions are Hymns to a 
Butterfly, and whose most elevated occupation is the 'sentimental 
ogling of a tulip,' I fear that we are in the sad condition of the 
degenerate Israelites ; having abandoned the God of our fathers, 
and gone a-hunting after strange idols. The old Egyptian 
plague is renewed among us, and grasshoppers and locusts have 
gotten into the king's chamber. The community of letters has 
indeed become a republic ; all are now equal in insignificance. 
And the extinction of monarchy in song, like that of the political 
monarchy of France, is followed by a rabble of daily aspirants, 
whose fame is as brief as their popularity was vehement." 

"I am afraid," said I, "that your simile extends its applica- 
tion to your disadvantage. If the judges will not admit Byron 
into the line of legitimate 'kings,' the people will crown him by 
the title of ' emperor.' " 

" I would rather," replied Courteney, " subscribe to Byron's 
opinion of Pope, than the people's opinion of Byron. Of the 
poets now in vogue, you must unman yourself to read one-half, 
and unchristianize yourself to • admire the other. Aristides, 
being guilty of no other crime than the crime of being just, was 
banished upon that charge ; and Pope, in the dearth of fault, is 
condemned because he is 'moral.' The ostracists of Pope talk 
much of the necessity of 'invention' to constitute a true poet, 
and descant much on the importance of ' imaginative' topics ; 
but it is yet to be proved that a subject rises in poetical value 
in proportion as it sinks in every other value. How can it affect 
the beauty of the structure that its foundations rest upon a rock ? 
Are the garlands of Fancy the less lovely, or is their odor the 
less fragrant, because they are entwined around the sceptre of 
Truth ? Is the splendid Pharos that, sublimely silent, gazes o'er 
the deep, the less picturesque, because its main purpose is 
utility ? Is the architecture of the Doric portico at Athens the 
less exquisite in its impression, because it was built for a market- 
place ? Those critics must be arrant poetical Calvinists, who 
deem so vilely of their own species as to deny it to be a worthy 
topic of the jioet's pen. "What subject can be more interesting 
than the conduct of man ? more various than the nature of man ? 



252 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

more sublime than the duties of man ? I admit then to Byron 
the title of Poet of the Ocean, — to Hemans, of Poet of the 
Lily ; I admit not — I demand for Pope the title of the Poet 
of Man." 

"It was the sincerity of an honest freedom," said I ; "the con- 
sciousness that he battled singly for the right — that with a magic 
transformation made the pen of Pope, as Paulus Jovius said of 
his own, sometimes a pen of gold and sometimes a pen of iron, 
and caused his couplets to flow around the land with a might of 
sarcasm unwithstood. Conservative in all his feelings, he yet 
hated cant with a fierce defiance ; anxious to impress his age, he 
yet conciliated no sect and truckled to no party. Buying no 
voices and leaguing with no confederates, he stretched forth his 
hand in the name of truth, and in that name he wrought his 
miracles ; — 'alone he did it.' Such a man has no need to con- 
cern himself about popularity ; he creates it, as the sun creates 
the day." 

" While Pope, in action, wandered into no enormous vices," 
said Courteney, " he proposed in theory no extravagant standard 
of virtue : his precepts were guarded, as Mackintosh finely says 
of Paley, 'by a constant reference to convenience and practice.' 
How opposite to this is the modern school of teachers I Look 
at Shelley complaining of wrong and tyranny, and eulogising 
purity and heavenly love, and then marrying two wives and 
leaving one of them to die of a broken heart. Look at Cole- 
ridge, — who together with Wordsworth is essentially of the same 
tribe, — writing songs ' that bid the heavens be mute,' and leaving 
his wife to the charity of Mr. Southey, who is about the only 
literary man of our time who is not ashamed to do his duty, and 
is upon the whole the most perfect character of his age. This 
poetical fanfaronade about virtue and affection, is disgusting 
in the mouths of these worthless vagabonds : 

' Remember 
How easier far devout enthusiasm is 
Than a good action; and how willingly 
Our indolence takes up with pious rapture. 
Though at the time unconscious of its end, 
Only to save the toil of useful deeds.'" 



^TAT. 20.] POPE. 263 

" Pope," said I, " has certainly done as much to exalt the dig- 
nity of humanity by his life, as to improve the behavior of men 
by his writings,. — an article of commendation which can be ex- 
tended to but few of his brethren. That tissue of putative mean- 
ness which was woven by the unnumbered foes which his genius 
had created, and which Johnson was not unwilling to extend, 
Roscoe has blown away like the filmly gossamer of the morning ; 
and presented us instead, with a story as touching to our feelings 
and as honorable to our common nature as any other with 
which I am acquainted." 

"Sir," cried my companion, warming with enthusiasm as his 
mind dwelt upon the character of his favorite poet, " the hand 
of Biography does not present us with a finer or more generous 
instance of a man giving himself up solely and without reserve 
to high literary ambition ; — with the solemnity of an Hamilcar 
dedication, consecrating himself at the altar of fame ; bringing 
to it the tender blossoms of his early boyhood, — to it, the ripened 
fruitage of his elder years. Withdrawing himself from the world, 
and nursing in solitutude the fire of his heart, that youthful ar- 
dor which in most cases is suffered to play objectless like the 
ground-fire of the tropics, was by him concentered on a single 
object. With no vices, with few foibles ; free from domestic 
cares, and safe from all political disturbance ; wasting not a mo- 
ment on the transitory, — he dwelt apart in his beautiful villa, 
looking out upon man as from the window of a castle, and 
sketching his character and his destiny with the calmness and 
fidelity of a superior nature ; in youth creating richly, in man- 
hood refining slowly ; living out his sad and shattered age with 
no other purpose before him than 

' To better his life and better his lay, 
To virtue's improvement and vice's decay.' 

Justly might he have exclaimed, 'quantum alii tribuunt tem- 
pestivis conviviis, quantum alece, quantum pilce ; tantum, mihi 
egomet ad hcec stadia recolenda sumpsi.^" 

" But might not the individual to whom those words were self- 
applied, contest the claim of Pooe to superior devotion to lofty 
fame ?" 

22 



254 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

" I tliink not. The part AA^bich Cicero took in public life ; his 
military longings ; his labors as au advocate and prosecutor ; his 
occupations as a quaestor and consul, to all of which he looked 
for merely temporary distinction, would remove him from the 
comparison. Besides, you see clearly that to present duties, 
Cicero gave the preference in his own mind, and the time which 
he dedicated to labor for immortality was fragmentary, not 
continuous ; snatched, not assigned. It is true that, in the midst 
of popular ap})lause .and judicial approbation ; amid the tumults 
of official triumph and the distractions of private luxury — the 
still small voice of eternal aspiration reached and stung his in- 
most soul : but it was occasional, like the dim vistas which ever 
and anon open and close upon the eye of one who wanders 
through a forest. But Pope stood with his face full-turned upon 
the future, his eye resting nowhere short of the remotest posterity ; 
knowing well that the incense of fame is the smoke of sacrifice, 
and that the diadem of genius' is the martyr's crown. His was 
the sole glorious task to conquer immortality ; unambitious to 
light an earthly lamp which might attract the sidelong glance 
of the passing traveller, or kindle a transitory fire which might 
draw together the idle and the vain, but emulous to plant a star 
in the eternal heavens, which though so distant that the first 
rays which reached the world might shine upon his grave, yet 
which, when seen, should be seen forever, and living on in still- 
abiding lustre, become a fadeless portion of the very frame of 
nature." 

" The change," said I, " which has come over the whole cha- 
racter of English poetry within half a century, and has extended 
so deeply as to have transformed the principles of criticism, has 
not yet met with satisfactory analysis. ' Poetry,' says Johnson, 
' has rarely been w^orse employed than in dignifying the amorous 
ravings of a love-sick girl:' — what a revolution in taste and 
opinion does the date of that remark exhibit !" 

"And, stranger than all," said Courteney, "the verses upon 
which that bitter sentence was pronounced, have been repeat- 
edly quoted as the sole evidence that Pope was a true poet. If 
the definition of poetry by the king of poets be adopted, Byron 



^TAT. 20.] POPE. 255 

and Wordsworth and Heraans would fare badly. 'A poem,' 
says Milton, speaking by the mouth of his nephew, Phillips, ' is 
an illustration or embodiment of some important moral truth, 
not draivn from indwiduality, but created by the imagination, 
by combining, with taste and judgment, ingredients selected 
from the stores of fancy.' Had a description been framed with 
the express object of commending Pope and excluding Byron, 
it could not have been more scrupulously pointed. You can- 
not discover in the noble poet, a single notion or feeling which 
is general in its nature, or true upon univei'sal application. The 
ability to rise above idiosyncrasy. — to project general conscious- 
ness into imagined circumstance — so to expand the particular, 
and peculiarise the common, that any given sentiment shall be 
universal in reach and individual in impression — to widen views 
into principles, and point axioms into personalities, so that all 
shall embrace and each indentify — this, the keystone of poetic 
power, was utterly wanting in him. If Byron seems to have 
penetrated more deeply into the human heart than Pope, it is 
because the one digged so narrowly that the smallness of the ex- 
tent assisted the depth, and the other opened so expansively 
that the wideness of the labor seemed to level the profundity. 
The brilliance of Byron's flashes proceeds from the ray being- 
broken : Pope's light is the white light of unrefracted truth. To 
present a thought which shall be purely, precisely, and perfectly 
just, requires so many modifications, flattenings and smoothings 
down of the first bold impression, that most artists have been 
deterred from the undertaking ; and in the hands of the few who 
have attempted it, the work has commonly slid into the vague 
and the commonplace. Pope with unequalled felicity has united 
truth and power. Search the rolls of poetry from Orpheus to 
the newest-born, and of philosophy from the first who ever 
guessed to the latest who has ever reasoned ; explore the enig- 
matic revelations of the dark-thoughted Brooke, and the lucid 
demonstrations of the mastiff-minded Ilobbes, and find, if you 
can, a passage so profoundly affecting and so exquisitely uner- 
roneous ; so full of dignified pathos, and so instinct with majestic 
wisdom — as his description of the state of man : 



256 TRAQMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [Mtxt. 20. 

' Born but to die, and reasoning but to err : 
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd ; 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world !' 

Think of these words amid the din of worldly business ; think 
of them in the ardor of studious toil ; think of them in the 
silence of your midnight chamber — and they shall seem to you 
the utterings of a prophet's voice." 

"Bolingbroke," said I, "somewhere remarks, that we might 
give to certain learned plodders, as chronologists and annalists, 
the praise which their eminence challenges, if we could persuade 
ourselves that they could have succeeded as well in anything 
else ; and the thought, though false, is natural and common. 
If Pope's claim to reward for the philosophic be contested, as it 
often is, on the ground that he wanted powers for the pathetic, 
the confutation of the doubt is complete in a single stanza. 
There is not in the wide compass of our literature a more 
moving passage than that in which this poet, so morbidly nn- 
egotistic, turns from the attack on the miserable detractors of 
his time to make one allusion to his cherished mother. The man 
who could write thus avoided the pathetic for a reason." 

"A far deeper pathos than the pathos of sentiment," said 
Courteney, " is the pathos of wisdom. Lord Byron's appeals 
to the heart are about as elevated in their character and managed 
with about as much artistic skill as those which form the tale 
of the last beggar who was wrecked on the coast of Barbary. 
There is more of the very heart and soul of genuine pathos in 
one of Sir Thomas Browne's magnificent sneers, or in Gold- 
smith's anticipation of the fate of England, than in a thousand 
dyspeptic Laras and costive Giaours. But whatever may be the 
defects of Byron's poetry, considered merely as poetry, his real 
faults are of another description : it is not the want of genius 
that I discern, but the want of generosity that I lament. Who 
is there that, fascinated as he might be by the novelty of the 
thoughts ; the beauty of the images ; and the splendor of the 
diction, is not disgusted by the peevish and unmanly complaint ; 
the paltry protrusion of self; the miserable vanity and person- 



;Etat. 20.] BYRON. 25t 

ality ; and the total want of dignity, elevation, and independence ? 
A misanthrope must be a man of a narrow soul : it must be a 
small mind, which, when irritated by ill-treatment, finds a satis- 
faction in the impotent revenge of hate. No admiration to 
which the genius of Byron might prompt me, could ever check 
the repulsive scorn which is stirred within me by the sight of one 
thus having 'his eyes forever on himself,' and coming before the 
world only to tell it how keen are his sensibilities and how painful 
his indigestions ; that he has not loved the world, and that 
Wordsworth is his aversion : never will I so far debase my own 
inward dignity as to listen to these wretched egotisms of another, 
much less will I dwell upon and applaud the miserable petulant 
outbreakings of a disappointed and jealous lordling. I I'espect 
myself too highly to treasure up what despicable inuendoes 
against others, or ridicnlous mystifications about himself, any 
other may descend to, to gratify diseased ambition, or soothe his 
fretted vanity. No ! let me dwell among manly poets ; among 
those exalted older spirits from whose hymnings one rises re- 
buked, chastened and purified, and learns to ' venerate himself 
as MAN :' messengers who forgot not their mission, but made 
their heaven-descended genius parent of heaven-ascending 
graces ; whom you read with a free soul, and an expansion 
of mind like that bred by the wide ocean-scene we now survey, 
and whom we lay down in a better frame of feeling than we 
took up ; in better obedience of God's great laws ; in better 
love of our fellows ; and far better appreciation of our own state 
and value. The transition from the morbid and self-dissecting 
poets of our times ; the stove-room and hot-house species — to 
the clear and trumpet-voiced minstrels of an age gone by : 
Spenser, Dryden and Thomson — is like the passage from yonder 
heated and dizzy billiard-room to this clear, freshening, bracing 
air. To them and to it we turn as to exhaustless sources of 
high impression : from it and from them we return as from baths 
of the soul, nerved with gladness and springing with enthusiasm. 
For to nature and to those kings of song only, it belongs to 
ever fascinate with never changing : we look to the moon with 
not the less joy, because we know that we shall see but what we 

90* 



25'8 FRACIMENTAL LITERARY Dli^QUISlTlONS. [Mtxt. 20. 

have seen from infancy, and read Milton with interest undi- 
minished by life-long familiarity. Those great intelligences of 
yonng time, are commensurate with nature and similar to her ; 
their uniformity is like the uniformity of the heavens, the neces- 
sary oneness of complete perfection ; for when part has reached 
the summit, how can the rest diifer but by descending ? What 
variation can there be, but the variation of inferiority ? The sun 
varies not, nor does Homer : his monotony is the level line 
which is pencilled on the sky, by the highest ridge of the high- 
looming hills. The mind loves to seize on some great watch- 
towers upon the shores of thought, and brace itself against a 
rock in the absorbing ocean. The intellect would craze with 
illimitation, if there wei'e not in the wide view some eternal 
bounds of power, like Dante and Shakspeare." 

Thus talked we by the banks of the sea, through the calmness 
of twilight, till the moon shone clearly and the power of its 
light proved the presence of darkness. " Well," said Courteney, 
turning to me after a pause, " if you wish to catch inspiration or 
a cold any longer from this scene, I see no reason why you may 
not ; but I, you know, am a poet, and it will never do for me to 
study nature too long." 

"But is not that your very business and profession ?" 
" Fudge ! Take my word for it, that those who have best 
described nature have known least about her, and the noblest 
sonnets to the moon have been penned in the presence of a 
sea-coal fire, with shutters closed and curtains drawn. When 
we gaze corporeally upon the earth or sky, feeling chokes intel- 
lect, and sense stifles imagination ; and thus the right hand and 
the left of the poet are paralyzed. Nature presents a thought 
too big to pass through the channel of expression, and the 
reason must grasp and wring it, e'er the drops of Castalia will 
trickle from the cloud ; yet the reason is dashed by the tyranny 
of vision. It is this incumbency of one vast idea which renders 
the inhabitants of mountainous countries idiots. We become 
great, not by putting impressions into the mind, but by drawing 
them out ; they are all in there. For the infant soul was nursed 
in the bosom of God ; and the point where all the converging 



.Etat. 20.] A DINNER COMPANY. 259 

and diverging rays of thought and feeling meet, is God ; she 
therefore containeth in herself all consciousness of truth and all 
sentiment of nature in like manner as the centre containeth the 
circumference. But timid are these inward emotions, and slighter 
than the amethystine air-curls of the spirit that sleeps in the 
shade of the rose-down; and, therefore, when the armed ideas 
of externality troop rudely near, they lurk within and pretend 
themselves dead ; but when the moon-crowned midnight of men- 
tal quietude circles the soul with its still white drapery, then 
step they forth lightly, slowly, falteringly, like the fear-vestured 
lady from a sentinelled camp to meet her hostile lover; and 
ever by the day, sleeping in their caverns, lulled by the music 
of the heart, dream they audibly, and we may hear them dream, 
and 'tis that hearing which doth make us poets. Come, won't 
you take a game of billiards ?" 

" Certainly," said I; "we should take the poetry and prose 
of life together, like bread and cheese." 



A DINNER-PARTY DIALOGUE. 

A scientific Treatise upon dining — A dinner-party — Company assembles — Phi- 
losophy of dining— Various topics discussed — Roman dinners — Grecian din- 
ners — Characteristics of the Northern and Southern nations of Europe — 
Proper age of a cook — Roscoe — Politian — Johnson — Parr — AVarburton — 
Webster — Byron — Bulvver — Sir Egerton Brydges — Coleridge — Southey — 
The moral tone of true Genius. 

Feasting hereon, we will philosophise. — Shelley. 

A FEW weeks after the conversation with Courteney, which 
I have already given, I accepted an invitation to dine with a 
gentleman who held among his equals meridian distinction in 
that meridian art. Mr. Benton was one who had meditated 
with that earnest and chastised devotion which so great and 
elevated a subject demands, on the best mode of dining; and 
it is paying but a merited compliment to the genius and 
study of this good man, to declare that he understood the sub- 
ject better, and practised it with more success than any person 



260 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

I have ever met with. At various times I have been favored 
with his views upon this interesting subject ; for, though not ob- 
trusive in his proselytisra as most discoverers are, Mr. Benton 
was always glad when an opportunity occuired of disseminating 
correct notions on this important topic, and he had none of that 
selfishness which might impel him to conceal from mankind what 
is necessarily never alien to humanity. But that timidity which 
is the fatal Cleopatra of genius, that proud resilience from the 
homage of the vulgar, which makes greatness splendid and im- 
practicable, kept him always from appearing before the public. 
" He died and made no sign ;" and the sauntering traveller as he 
steps carelessly over his modest grave, little knows that he treads 
above the remains of one whose genius the shade of Lucullus 
might venerate, and before whose labors the star of Orleans 
might dim its glories. 

When I have sometimes expressed to him the sense which I 
entertained of his valuable researches, and the hope which I 
cherished that he would not suffer his discoveries to perish with 
him, " I confess that I have sometimes thought," he would reply, 
" that what you are pleased to call my discoveries are not alto- 
gether without value, nor without interest ; as, indeed, nothing 
caa be that regards a science which, to say the least of it, is in- 
dispensable. My regard for the welfare and melioration of my 
fellow-creatures, has sometimes impelled me to wish that an easy 
and safe method presented itself of conveying to the world at 
large, some suggestions which the kindness of my friends has 
induced me to fancy not entirely valueless, and to perform that 
duty which every one owes to his race, by handing down to pos- 
terity what might be a ' possession for everlasting' of culinary 
metaphysics. I have sometimes thought of publication, and in- 
deed, I have employed some occasional hours in a few past years 
in the composition of a small volume on the subject of cookery ; 
but independently on the reluctance which I feel to intrude upon 
the grave world a book which must necessarily be ungraceful in 
style, and insufficiently supplied with learning, — which, at least, 
from my want of familiarity with the pen, would lack that me- 
lody of words and harmony of sentences, that Ciceronian charm 



.Etat. 20.] A TREATISE ON DINING. 261 

of aptly-balanced language, which would be required in treating 
of this, the first and most finished of the fine arts,. — ^independently 
on this personal objection, which my vanity will not attempt to 
deem slight, there is a greater one inherent in the attempt 
itself ; I mean the combat which in its tender veal-like infancy it 
must sustain with those butchering critics and reviewers who 
ever stand at the gate of knowledge, pen (knife) in hand ; for 
these gentlemen rudely, gracelessly, and unreasonably oppugning 
and running counter to the precept of the immortal Louis Eus- 
tache Ude, to whom be honoi*, long life, and the gratitude of 
grateful men !" 

"Amen, and amen !" cried I. 

" Opposing, I say, that precept of His, which forbids us to 
slay a calf in its tender youth, but to sheathe the knife till his 
beef-hood shall be attained ; they rush savagely upon a scarce- 
fledged writer, and kill, serve him up with a garni of sauce, be- 
fore he has grown robust by age. Whether it be, as Goethe con- 
jectured, that by some personal misconstruction of mind ; by a 
peculiar obliquity in their moral constitution ; by the frame of 
their mental powers ; by the very condition of their existence — 
these people are prevented from telling the truth, certain it is 
that such a thing as a generous and genial criticism is as rare as 
half-boiled beef. To me, much reflecting upon these matters, it 
has appeared that the evil arises from the unfortunate position 
of these anti-authors : for authors and professional critics hold 
much the same relation to one another that England does to 
France ; a relation, according to Mr. Fox, of national enmity. 
They have adopted the lying maxim, that ridicule is the test of 
truth, where, in fact, it is the greatest enemy truth has ever had ; 
being much such a test as proving a sword upon a stone, trying 
a liquid by evaporation, or searching for vitality with a scalpel ; 
whatever may be the result, the object examined is destroyed for- 
ever. They have let in the laughers into the gardens of Philo- 
sophy ; the baying hoiands into the still coverts of the ruminating 
stag. And they are sure to be supported by the populace, for 
the populace loves to demolish ; I never heard of a mob assembled 
to construct. The more I consider this affair of laughing, the 



262 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIOSTS. [^Etat. 20. 

more absurd aud unworthy it appears to rae. But the reviewers 
can do nothing else, being like those tormented spirits, the 
ghosts of scoffers, described in an ancient legend, who are con- 
demned to expiate their sins by grinning painfully through all 
eternity. Similar is the critic's destiny ; for, humanity aud the 
fresh feelings of unshackled sympathy being dead within them, 
they become even as dead men, and, like skeletons, deriding hu- 
manity ; aud they thrust forward their ever-grinning visages into 
the Egyptian feast of literature, aud humble their author by the 
claim of fraternity." 

Unfortunately, Mr. Benton could not look with such tranquil 
philosophy on these things, as Sterne* did, and the world lost 
forever the benefit of his meditations. His best and most honor- 
able " works," however, were such as could not well be communi- 
cated to the world, in substance, nor could the world give them 
a tribute meet for their desert. One of these I was about to 
allude to, when interrupted by this digression. 

I arrived at the house before any of the company were as- 
sembled. Soon after I had reached the drawing-room, a vene- 
rable but most cheerful-looking man, whom I knew at once to 
be an ecclesiastic, entered, and with an uncertain step, something 
between a trip and a totter, made his way to the host and bowed 
with entire_j simplicity, but with the air of a man perfectly ac- 
customed to the great world. He was short in stature, and his 
feet were the smallest I ever saw ; his person was firm, and face 
unwrinkled, although, to judge by his total baldness, " his eight- 
ieth year was nigh." His figure was a good deal bent, but ap- 
parently more from study than age ; and his head generally 
rested on his breast, but was very frequently thrown up with a 
mild impatience, or forward with a kind of restless nod. He 
had a habit of drawing in the air between his teeth every few 
moments with a curious noise ; an action which he incessantly 
displayed when another was speakmg, together with many other 

* "As we rode along the valley," says Sterne in one of his letters from 
France, "we saw a herd of asses on the top of one of the mountains. How 
they viewed and reviewed us !" 



iETAT. 20.] A DINNER COMPANY. 26S 

of the iimiimerable tricks of a nervous man. Mr. Benton named 
him to me as Dr. Gauden. 

" Sir," growled the doctor, with great urbanity, mumbling and 
biting his words as he spoke, "I'm very happy to make your 
acquaintance. I knew your grandfather very well, very well, 
indeed;" throwing up his head and muttering almost to himself, 
" ah ! ah ! so it is ! dead and gone!" then turning his back on 
nie and limping off to a chair, he continued soliloquising with an 
alternate nod and toss of the head : "ah ! as Yarro says, ' vetus- 
tas non pauca depravat, multa tollit. Quern puerum vidisti 
formosum nunc vides deformem senectu. Tertium seculum 
non vidit eum hominum, quern vidit primum.' " 

Dr. Gauden had been educated for the Catholic priesthood at 
one of the old colleges of France, which have formed for many 
years the noble nursing-mothers of the Romish clergy of Pro- 
testant countries. There he had been thoroughly imbued with 
ancient lore, and taught to know the ancient writers and the 
fathers as familiarly as the divines and classics of his native 
tongue. When, in later years, he departed from the church of 
his fathers, he took with him all the tastes and habits which he 
had formed in its bosom ; and though becoming an active 
Protestant clergyman, " the scent of the cloister had clung to 
him still." 

Testa reccns 
Quo semel est imbuta, diu servabit odorem. 

He lived entirely among the old, illustrious authors ; for modern 
books, he said, only repeated one another. He fed his mind 
upon the golden pages of Tertullian and Chrysostom, of Cicero 
and Plato, for it was the aliment to which it had been accus- 
tomed. His memory was "rich with the spoils of time ;" and 
his conversation abounded with choice fragments of Pagan and 
Christian eloquence. His quotations had nothing of pedantic 
in their frequency, but seemed to be the natural overflowing of a 
full mind. If he wove into his common discourse, a " thread or 
two drawn from the coat of an apostle," or gave his hearers " a 
smack of Augustin or a sprig of Basil," all knew that the display 



264 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

was not an exhibition of vanity : ignorance was not alarmed, 
and taste was not oflended. 

A few minutes after, Mr. Rolle entered the room ; a man 
of singularly feeble and delicate frame, and a countenance full 
of feeling and poetry ; a vague, uncertain smile played con- 
stantly about his mouth, hidicating one whose thoughts mostly 
floated in some inner sphere of sentiment and rarely appreciated 
the reality of the real things around him ; an impression which 
was assisted by the dreamy stare of his large, moist, gray eye. 
He entered the room in an amusing state of excitement, and, 
trembling with emotion, addressed his host in broken and almost 
tearful accents 

" My dear Mr. Benton, could not you have dinner postponed 
for a little while until I recover my composure ? You see how 
excessively I am excited : I cannot appear at the table with any 
propriety." 

"Do not concern yourself about that, my dear sir," said Mr 
Benton. " The company consists of your own particular friends, 
and I am sure that they will excuse any disorder in youi 
manner," 

" Oh !" replied the other, " it is not for them that I care ; it 
is for myself. How can I enjoy my dinner in such a state of 
embarrassment ? How can I come with agitated nerves and an 
excited mind to a task which above all others requires 'the con- 
Bcience pure, the easy mind,' — a reason undisturbed by passion, 
senses cool, critical and keen in nice detection, — a body and a 
spirit perfectly at rest, like the stone beneath the J^gis of wis- 
dom ? Couldn't you put off your dinner till to-morrow ? I am 
sure these gentlemen would as leave come to-morrow." 

"My dear friend," said Benton, laughing heartily, while Rolle 
stood the picture of humorous perplexity, "you shall dine with 
me both to-day and to-morrow ; and to secure you the degree 
of coolness necessary to the free and full exercise of your unri- 
valled powers of analysis, you shall be brought here to-morrow, 
like a salmon, in an ice-basket. Meanwhile, as a dinner is not 
like a debate, a matter which may be adjourned, I hope that 
if you sit down in that corner and take out your wrist-buttons, 



^TAT. 20.] A DINNER COMPANY. 2G5 

and suffer me to fan you gently, you may at length be recovered 
into a tolerable condition for dining. But what has been the 
cause of this terrible disturbance ? Have you been waylaid ? 
Have you been fired at ? Have you been robbed ?" 

"Worse, worse!" replied the other. "Sit down and I will 
tell you about it : but do not look so strongly at me, for it ex- 
cites me more ; look naturally. The event which has so much 
discomposed me, is this : I was coming here when I met, two 
corners off, a servant-boy, with two magnificent rock-fishes — a 
rarity in these times, more golden than gold. They were fishes 
like those described in Athenteus, aOavatoiat, yeoiat, ^vrjv xai tlSo; 
6liA.oi.ai, 'in shape and nature like the immortal gods.' The 
wi-etch, to whose care some malignant demon had entrusted 
these spoils of Neptune, instead of carrying them with cautious 
solemnity, as the charge demanded, went swinging them both 
in one hand, with utter carelessness, and bruising them by 
striking them against one another. Instantly I perceived this 
barbarous and atrocious conduct, I rushed across the street, 
and seizing the boy, demanded to know by what infatuation 
he was possessed to treat those fishes in such a manner. He 
replied, insolently, that the fishes were his master's, and that if 
the latter knew how he carried them he would have no objection. 
I told him that I should go with him to his master and see 
whether he allowed such animals to be destroyed in that man- 
ner, and that if he did not resent it, I should punish him myself 
for such a public outrage. Hereupon the boy fled, leaving me 
alone with the precious prizes : upon examining them I found 
one of them utterly ruined by the bruises it had got. Hiiic illce 
lachrymce: and judge thou if there be not cause. The other, I 
thank God, is safe." 

" And where is it ?" cried Benton, with some curiosity. 

" In my hat in the entry," replied Rolle, in a whisper. 
" Come and dine with me alone to-morrow at ten, and we will 
eat it." 

This conversation, which gave me a glimpse of that most 
curious of all characters, a sentimental gourmand, was inter- 
rupted by the entrance of a gentleman of Herculean proportions, 
23 



266 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

oddly habited in a scarlet hunting-jacket, loose pantaloons, and 
a colored neckcloth loosely tied about his neck. His face had 
a fine, frank, but firm expression ; and his large, keen eye de- 
noted high intelligence. His manners were natural and unre- 
strained — the behavior of a man who lived, not against, but 
above, the usage of the world ; and was directed to such conduct 
by his strong love of perfect freedom, and supported in it by the 
calm consciousness of powers and a reputation which would 
protect him against remark. Such a style of address adopted 
by a man of fresh and rich intellect and tempered by native 
delicacy and refined taste, renders intercourse delightful. It is 
a high relief to escape from the wearisome mistrust and the 
unworthy egotism of artificial manners, and from the confine- 
ment of small talk which good breeding imposes, because all 
may not be capable of large talk : you have the keen pleasure 
of freely coping a generous intellect, together with the gentle 
gratification of being, as habitual vanity suggests, in one respect 
above your companion. There was an odd mixture of rudeness 
and refinement in the character of Mr. Wilkins : he was at once 
a scholar and a boxer, a poet and a good fellow. 

Soon afterwards the Count de Bienne was announced, a gen- 
tleman whom I had known some years before quite intimately 
in Vienna. He was a man of ancient family, and the possessor 
of an extensive fortune. He had been left very early an orphan, 
and being master of his own actions, had gone to reside in 
America while a boy, and there he had spent his youth. He 
afterwards lived several years in England, and had subsequently 
visited almost every country in the world. He more fully 
realized to my conceptions the notions of a "citizen of the 
world," than any person I have ever met with. He spoke 
English, French and German equally and perfectly well ; had 
no prejudices and no partialities ; and seemed to sympathize 
equally and heartily with all nations and classes. He appeared 
to be a member of all religions at once, and an admirer of all 
existing forms of government at the same time: that is, he 
knew that abstract truth was a chimera, and that theories of 
liberty were a fallacy, and that there is no other real propriety 



^TAT. 20.] PHILOSOPHY OF DINING. 26Y 

or justice thau that wMcli arises upon right relation. Throwing 
himself into the situation and feelings of different nations, he 
saw that the creed and the policy of each were those that were 
best suited to their condition, their wants, and their circum- 
stances. There was scarcely any subject that concerned moral 
or social truth, on which Count de Bienne had not thought deeply ; 
and upon all, his views were equally original and striking. The 
singular independence of his opinions might be attributed to his 
always living alone, and to his having so fully observed the 
varieties and contradictions of human judgments and prepos- 
sessions, as to be alike indifferent to all of them. 

After the entrance of two or three other persons, dinner was 
announced. 

"What is the reason," said Mr. Wilkins, as the tureens were 
taken off, " that we always find soup served before our meats ? 
Vermicelli is at best a tasteless affair, and only takes away that 
appetite which should be reserved for worthier viands." 

"Sir," replied Mr. Benton, "you have hit upon the very 
reason. Soup is provided for the purpose of removing that 
keen animal appetite whose violence disturbs the mind in the 
nice perception of the harmony of tastes. Criticism is feeling ; 
and it is too delicate to distinguish finely when the senses 
are craving the strong physical gratification which nature and 
habit have made necessary to them. There are two distinct 
pleasures in eating : the first consists in simply appeasing the 
appetite, — the second in calmly exercising the sense of taste. 
The latter is the natural dehght springing from the action of one 
of the physical sources of enjoyment : the former is the inde- 
pendent pleasure caused by supplying or removing a painful 
want, on the general principle 

That every want which stimulates the breast 
Becomes a source of pleasure when rcdrost. 

You are a snuff-taker, Mr. "Wilkins, and you know that every 
pinch of snuff gives you two distinct delights, — that of pleasing 
the smell, and that of gratifying an animal want which custom 
has created. You as a sportsman also know how inconsistent 



268 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

is the exercise of taste with strong appetite ; for at the end of a 
daj^'s hunt you find cold beef as agreeable as terrapins, and per- 
haps more so ; because the more delicate pleasure is absorbed 
in the stronger, and what most gratifies the latter is most accept- 
able. As but one of these pleasures is worthy of a sentient 
being, we provide soups to extinguish the other ; that is, we 
destroy hunger to create taste." 

"That is reasonable enough," said RoUe ; "but surely no 
man of sense ever allows himself to get hungry. From the first 
moment that I could reflect justly on the ' end and aim' of human 
existence, I do not think that I have ever been hungry." 

" It is curious, by the way, to observe," continued Benton, 
" that the wise ancients had the same custom. Their supper, 
which corresponds to our dinner, was preceded by an ante- 
coenum, which consisted chiefly of wine thickened with honey. 
The commentators say that this was to quicken the appetite ; but 
honeyed wine must certainly have had an opposite effect." 

" The succession of dishes," said Rolle, " is a subject worthy 
of the most profound consideration. I regard the architecture 
of an entertainment as one of the highest of the fine arts. When, 
at the close of a well-cooked and well-arranged dinner, — such a 
dinner as Mr. Benton would choose to give, and I would choose 
to eat,. — I review the whole, it rises upon my mind like a sym- 
phony of Beethoven's, — a succession of elements harmoniously 
combined and exquisitely diversified. The beaux arts, by-the- 
by, are vastly more numerous than is commonly suspected. 
Dancing is unquestionably one of thertj, and eating is another. 
The latter is a science, which, as Sieyes said of politics, je crois 
avoir achevee : I have brought it to perfection. But there is 
another of the senses to which there is no corresponding fine 
art ; for, while the hearing has music, and the sight has archi- 
tecture, the objects which address the smell have never been 
reduced to a system. I have been engaged in investigating the 
matter aesthetically, and have nearly succeeded in constructing 
a gamut of odors, and I hope soon to present to my friends an 
overture of flowers. But let us postpone this discussion till 
dinner is over." 



iETAT. 20.] PHILOSOPHY OF DINING. 269 

" The notiou of Mr. Rolle is true," said Wilkins. " The great 
principle of the universe, moral and physical, is relation ; and 
the sole business of the mind, — the only thing about which it 
can possibly employ itself, — the primary point at which its 
operation begins, and the terminating bound at which it stops, — 
the first step it takes from the domains of the sensible, and the 
last progress it achieves in the regions of the intellectual, — is 
the perception of relation. The soul, says Plato, is a harmony ; 
and by the soul he means that mass of organized thought and 
feeling which belongs to, and is our moral existence ; and by 
harmony he means just relation ; these hoarded perceptions 
of just relation throughout all things, make the soul. There is 
a mental and a physical perception of relations ; that is, a per- 
ception by the mind and by the senses. The former gives rise 
to sciences and the latter to fine arts. The fine arts therefore 
may be defined the evolution of harmony in the objects of the 
senses. Metaphysically they are but one ; physically they are 
indefinite in number. Wherever there is a harmony in sound, 
motion, size, form, smell, taste or touch, ^/jere there is room for 
a fine art. This notion, which I but obscurely hint at now, gives 
rise to a new metaphysical system. I am a materialist, and 
regard thinking as one of the fine arts. I shall some day or 
other publish a quarto volume on the subject, with an appendix 
of map.?." 

"I hope," said Dr. Gauden, "the chapter on the testhetics 
of eating will be illustrated by plates." 

"It is curious to observe," continued Wilkins, "how often 
poets and others, writing not from a priori reasoning, but from 
the natural instinct of impression, have alluded to harmony in 
matters of form. The word music which they employ denotes 
mere harmony ; and both of these words have been restricted to 
or derived from matters of sound, probably because the mind, 
being greatly under the tyranny of vision, deemed the relation 
of what was perceived by another sense, more abstract and un- 
material than the perceptions of the sight, and so gave to that 
science or drew from it the generic name of the whole operation. 
Sir Thomas Browne says, ' There is a music even in beauty, and 
23* 



270 FKAGxMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound 
of an instrument.' Byron, in ' The Bride of Abydos,' speaks of 
'the mind, the music, breathing from the face.' Milton says, 
' The hand sang with, the voice, and this the argument.' An old 
law reporter dwells with delight on ' the music of a well-written 
act of parliament.' From a feeling of the same sort the Greeks 
gave to colored stones arranged in varied order the name of 
'mousaic,' which modern speech has corrupted into 'mosaic' 
When the old philosopher spoke of the music of the spheres, he 
meant the harmony of form and motion, and had no allusion 
whatever to sound : neither had Wordsworth when he heard 
'the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh, nor grating,' — he 
was referring only to the melody of virtuous conduct in the 
midst of suffering. Bacon, in a similar spirit, speaks of 'the 
breath of flowers' coming and going in the air, ' like the warbling 
of music' — There is another consideration connected with this 
which affords scope for talent. If these arts are the relations 
of homogeneous elements, mathematics, which is the science of 
pure and abstract relation, is certainly capable of being applied 
to them. There can be no question that algebra or the calculus 
possess within themselves the capacity of expressing composite 
sounds and solid forms, and all other matters, as well as numerical 
quantities and linear shapes. I do not yet despair of seeing the 
formula of a temple or an overture. Indeed I am persuaded 
that even thought is reducible to definite primary elements, and 
that an equation might be constructed which should express all 
the possible combinations of these elements, and so contain all 
that man can think on all subjects. No human head perhaps 
could do it, and no human sheet of paper contain the equation ; 
but still theoretically the thing is possible." 

During the delivery of this harangue, Mr. RoUe had been 
diligently engaged in "unlocking the hidden soul" of flavor 
from a cancre commun, and I had overheard him ejaculating 
audibly, " Lord 1 how good!" — "Oh! how delicious !" — "0 — 
oh Lord, — oh Lord;" and occasionally exclaiming fretfully, 
" I wish that Wilkins would hold his tongue ; how can a man 
eat when there is so much talking ?" 



^TAT. 20.] PHILOSOPHY OF DINING. 2U 

"Besides this," contiuuecl Mr. Willdns, resuming his argu- 
ment,. — 

Mr. Rolle rose upon his feet : " Mr. Wilkins, it is my duty to 
inform you, that unless you cease making a noise I shall leave 
the room ; yes, sir, unless your discourses are deferred I shall 
dine in the entry, with my plate on a chair. It is impossible 
that, amid the distraction and mental harassment which listening 
and thinking occasion, any man should bring to the dishes that 
calmness of soul and concentration of mind which such a pro- 
fession as eating demands." 

" Mr. Rolle," said Wilkins, " will you allow me the honor of a 
glass of wine with you ?" 

"With great pleasure, Mr. Wilkins," said Rolle, relapsing 
into his chair. 

"The ancients, Mr. Rolle," resumed Wilkins, "thought it 
well that something should amuse the mind during the moments 
of dining, so that the senses might be at liberty to gambol in 
delight 'at their own sweet will.' They therefore provided 
music at their entertainments, to absorb the spiritual part of 
man. Talking, if you would talk, might serve the same pur- 
pose. Is not my authority correct, Dr. Gauden ?" 

"But Euripides," growled the doctor, "objects to music at 
feasts, as being a superfoetation of enjoyment, and directs the 
song to be reserved for dolorous occasions. ' A concert of music 
in a banquet of wine,' says the author of Ecclesiasticus, 'is as a 
signet of carbuncle set in gold.' In general, I think, the custom 
has prevailed among barbarous, rather than cultivated nations. 
Indeed, Sam. Johnson says the Greeks were barbarians." 

" The Greek mind," said Rolle, " was essentially encyclopasdic ; 
it craved totality ; its perpetual strife was to embrace all ; it 
mistook universality for perfection, and sought liot the all-com- 
plete so much as the naught-defective. This glorious error led 
theiu to paint their temples, to color their statues, to dance as 
well as sing their odes, ai^ to bring musicians into the dining- 
room. They desiderated all that the genius could do in creation, 
rather than all that the taste would admire in contemplation ; 
and in pursuit of the might he sometimes missed the ought to 



2^2 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

be, — not always acting ou tliat fine critical principle of ' Jack 
Birkenhead's,' which Bishop Sprat has preserved, 'that a great 
wit's great work is to refuse.' The modern capacity may have 
contracted, but certain it is that no man, as men now are, can 
fully taste one kind of pleasure while another is at hand to dis- 
tract the perception. Architecture is the beauty of form; if 
coloring is superadded, it will defeat the impression of the former 
just in proportion to its excellence. When you are conversing 
and I am eating, two high delights are presented at once, and 
one injures the enjoyment of the other. Conscious that I must 
lose something, that loss fills me with regret, and that regret 
unfits me for eliciting gratification. Besides, you forget, most 
eloquent Wilkins, that, as eating is in good part a mental enjoy- 
ment, listening to you more directly conflicts with a diner's duty, 
by withdrawing the necessary instruments of his profession. 
The philosopher should imitate the bee, which sucks honey from 
the dust as well as from the flower ; from the Pythagorean 
school, then, though we ought not to learn to confine our food 
to beans, we ought at least to learn silence. What opinion. Dr. 
Gauden, does your classical mind form upon the subject ? Is 
conversation an advantage in dining, or not ?" 

" Why, I think of it, what Cicero has said of eloquence in a 
philosopher," replied the other: "'Si afferatur, non repudi- 
anda; si absit, non magnopere desideranda.^ But the same 
Cicero says somewhere, that the Roman feasts were called con- 
vivial banquets, because the conversation and society constituted 
their chief pleasure, and that the Greeks gave the ceremony only 
such names as contemplated eating and drinking." 

" Did they ?" said RoUe. " Sage dogs I I'll forgive them the 
music. Ay ! they were right ; the knife talking with the meat 
is conversation enough, and there is no society like the society 
of the viands. Your Greek, after all, is your only true philoso- 
pher : honor and long life to the Greeks ! They called dinner 
by a word which signifies 'the best !' Judicious philologists !" 

"Still it must be confessed," said Dr. Gauden, "that the 
Romans sometimes did these things very handsomely. They 
rarely gave a shabby dinner. It showed that there was a very 



^TAT. 20.] HUMAN DINNERS. 2*73 

just appreciation of the case, when a single mullet sold for 
$250, and another for $320, and fish-ponds like those of Hirtius 
and LucuUus commanded $160,000." 

" The ancients," said Rolle, " sought to render eating more of 
a mental delight than we can afford to do, and introduced refine- 
ments unknown to us. They served at their table viands whose 
chief delicacy lay in their intellectual elegance and poetical 
beauty. A dinner given by Vitellius to his brother, had, says 
Suetonius, portions of seven thousand most choice birds in one 
dish, and of two thousand equally choice fishes in another. 
There stood in the centre a dish, called, from its enormous size, 
Minerva^g buckler ; and of what composed, think ye ? Of the 
livers of scari, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues 
of parrots, and the bellies of lamprey eels, brought from Carpa- 
thia and the remotest parts of Spain in ships of war sent out ex- 
pressly for the purpose. Claudian and Statins inveigh against 
this extravagance ; but their wisdom had sho'v\Ti itself more rich, 
if, when the feast was set before them, they had, like Jacques, 
given Heaven thanks and made no boast of it ; but these poets 
are raffish fellows. I know nothing more ridiculous than the 
sight of little fat-paunched Flaccus condemning the pleasures of 
the table, and exhorting to temperance and philosophic sobriety. 
Another dyspeptic satirist of the times slanders the emperor, be- 
cause he assembled the senate to discuss the best manner of 
boiling a turbot ; and what more important business could they 
have had, I should like to know ? It would be as well if the 
topics of senatorial debate were always as honorable, or the 
counsel of senators always as useful. But satire is a low-born 
trade, and the professors of it are base-minded growlers ; they 
go about snuffing, smelling, and whining in every direction, and 
wherever they find an open door, puppy-like, in they go. Ju- 
venal was very little of a gentleman. How different was Yirgil ! 
the most thorough-bred man of antiquity ! His mind and 
thoughts had a pearly purity and refinement ; in our days he 
would have been a parish priest, and have died of bronchitis." 

"Aristotle," said Dr. Gauden, "wrote a code of laws for the 
table, and it is recorded that he was pavticularly fond of fish. 



2t4 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

The most remarkable glutton of Greece appears to have been 
Philoxenus of Cythera, who never dined out without carrying 
his own castors, and being attended by several of his own pages 
to wait upon him. He prayed for the neck of a crane that he 
might prolong the sensation of taste. It is to be hoped that 
Pluto has changed him into a boa-constrictor." 

" I will venture to say," said Rolle, " that there has never been 
a man of genius who has not been a lover of good eating ; na- 
turally, I mean ; for many have been abstinent from .piety or 
principle, as Ximenes and Warburton. Look with what gust 
old Homer describes the carousals of his gods. Duly as the day, 
they met in council ; and after squabbling all the morning, they 
all trot off together down to Jupiter's brazen-floored palace to 
eat and drink, which was probably the only point on which they 
ever cordially agreed. Scott, too, has scarcely a novel without 
a good trencher-man in it ; and they are dealt with so conside- 
rately ; there is such a pleasant humorousness thrown over the 
exploits of Athelstan and Dalgetty, that you see very plainly it 
was a 'fellow-feeling' made him so 'wondrous kind.' Whenever 
his heroes stop for the night, the first thing that concerns him is 
to feed them." 

"Another maxim may be safely laid down," said Mr. Benton, 
" that it requires a certain degree of virtue to dine well, — at least, 
that bad men are never devoted to the table. I hold La Fon- 
taine's principle, ' that to get along well in the world, one must 
have a good stomach and a bad heart,' to be a contradiction in 
itself ; the two things are inconsistent. A bad heart implies a 
callousness of susceptibility of all sorts, and that is destructive 
of pleasure from eating. Johnson, who was the relentless enemy 
of cant, set this matter on a just footing ; ' some people,' said he, 
' profess not to care for their stomachs : for my part, I attend 
particularly to mine ; and look upon it that the man who does 
not care for his stomach, will not care for matters more impor- 
tant.' That noble thinker had a mind great enough to perceive 
the value of little things. Ci£sar showed his sagacity when he 
chose to have fat and sleek men about him, and distrusted lean 
ones. The master-passions of ambition and hate swallow up all 



iETAT. 20.] GRECIAN DINNERS. 275 

minor likings. Some one offered Wilks a pinch of snuff ; ' Thank 
you I' said the radical. 'I have no small vices.' It was taken 
notice of at Rome, that those who neglected regularity of at- 
tendance at the dinner-party hour (six o'clock in that city) were 
loose in their general conduct, and profligate in all their man- 
ners. Plutarch tells a story of one Polycharmus who, when ac- 
cused of various vices, solemnly appealed to the people to know 
whether he had ever violated the rules of the table, or been defi- 
cient in the devotion that was due to a supper. The sage Athe- 
nians perceived in this so jiist a sense of propriety, and such an 
habitual rectitude of principle, that they acquitted the fellow 1)y 
acclamation." 

"Yet there are some instances on record," said Wilkins, 
" which show that deep depravity may be united with a fine 
Apician taste. A gentleman who had a plum tree, on which 
two plums were just perfectly ripe, invited Darteueuf, the great 
epicure of the last century, half of whose name lives immortal in 
the verse of Pope, to dine with him, intending that each of them 
should, after the dessert, pluck one of the plums from the tree, 
that they might not be injured by being carried to the parlor. 
Darteneuf, as the dinner was waxing to a close, begged to be 
excused for a moment, left the room, went secretly into the gar- 
den, and plucked and ate both the plums 1 A baser act of vil- 
lany, a darker, or more remorseless want of feeling, was never 
exhibited. The man who could do such an act, would fatten 
his mushrooms with the blood of his brother." 

"Yet, my good Wilkins, the story is bipennis, and points 
both ways," said Rolle. "The man who invited any one to 
share such a Pomonan banquet must have had a heart to which 
Howard's was Pharaonic." 

" The circumstance that men dine in company and not alone," 
said Mr. Benton, " is proof of the moral excellence of the occu- 
pation ; for the virtues are all social ; the vices all solitary." 

"To settle the precise number," said Rolle, "at which the 
pleasures of eating and of enjoying society, are in aptest pro- 
portion, and neither predominates unduly, has always been a 
difficult problem in epicureanism. Our companies are generally 



2t6 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

too large. Among the Greeks and Romans, the usual orthodox 
number was between four and eleven. Ausonius says seven is 
the best, hicluding the master : if there be more, he remarks, 
punningly, it ceases to be convivium and becomes convicium. 
A supper of Augustus to twelve was so unusual as to have been 
deemed worthy of commemoration." 

" Yarro," remarked Dr. Gauden, " seems to have been the first 
who gave the rule of not more than the muses, nor less than the 
graces." i 

"Cardinal De Retz declares," said Wilkins, "that whenever 
a company amounts to one hundred, it is a mob, and few men 
have had more acquaintance with mobs, or have written their 
natural history better, than Cardinal De Retz. But this limit, 
if the true one, applies only to politics ; for the standard varies 
with the intention and purpose of the assembly, and a far smaller 
number constitutes a literary mob than is required for a political 
one. I take this to be the just criterion in the case ; that when- 
ever the spirit of individuality passes out of the persons assem- 
bled, and some aggregate spirit, whether patriotic, destructive 
or panic ; whether the genius loci, or the afflatus of occasion 
enters into them ; whenever private sympathy ceases and col- 
lective impression begins, so that men are influenced not per- 
sonatim, but gregatim, not by peculiar, but by general appeals ; 
whenever, in public companies, men harangue and not debate, 
and in private ones, discourse and not converse ; in a word, when- 
ever externality prevails over personality ; at that point the 
assembly becomes a mob according to its kind and sort. As 
every gentleman has a hatred of mobs, this consideration, rather 
than any numeral principle, should regulate the amount of the 
persons he calls together to dine. I should consider twelve edu- 
cated and spirited men at a dinper-table a decided mob ; while 
to make a rebellious mob in a garrisoned city several hundreds 
might be requisite ; such a number at all events as would allow 
collective enthusiasm to master personal fear. Under the em- 
pire three was pronounced a^mob ; which may be vindicated on 
Tertullian's authority, ' Ubi tres, Ecclesia est. ' I think it will bear 
an argument whether a single individual may not in some cir- 



^TAT. 20.] REQUISITE NUMBER. 211 

cumstances be a mob ; I should be strongly inclined to maintain 
that George Sandt when he murdered Kotzebue, the man who 
mutilated Andre's tomb in Westminster Abbey, and most of the 
assailants of royal personages, are not to be considered as indi- 
viduals, but as mobs sole." 

" Shall I have the honor of wine with you, Sir," said the 
Count de Bienne to me, who, seated beside me, had been eating- 
very quietly most of this time, and appeared disposed, for at 
least the first three or four courses, to be a "hearer" rather than 
" a doer of the word." — "With great pleasure on my part," replied 
I ; "and if you will allow me to propose a toast, it shall be in a 
goblet of Johannisberg — Mr. Benton's is a gift from the Prince 
— to the honor of your old friend Prince Metternich." "With 
all my heart," said the Count ; and so poured forth a goblet to the 
brim. " It is remarkable," said he, — apparently first inspired by 
his draught — " that the Teutonic nations alone, of all the people 
of the world, are capable of enjoying in that supreme felicity 
which to us it seems so naturally and so worthily to inspire — 
the delights of a dinner or a supper. All that Dr. Gauden has 
said about the Greek and Roman names and dinners is true 
enough ; but the Gothic nations alone of all the races of man- 
kind are capable of rising to the just and earnest worship of the 
god of wine. JSTo doubt the Greek could sip his mild Chian 
pleasantly, as, with his brows rose-wreathed and languid, he re- 
posed in the arms of his mistress ; and the Roman could temper 
with his dark Falernian the ardors of politics, or mellow the dry- 
ness of philosophy, with his strong-bodied Massic ; but the 'sub- 
lime energy of conviviality,' the deep and soul-enkindling quaf- 
fings of the cup, belong only to the blood of the Northmen. 
Wherever the Latin race has mingled itself with the Gothic, the 
same inferiority has attached itself. The Italians and Spanish 
are dead to the enchantment of the grape, and the French Bac- 
chic poetry sounds like a shout whistled through a straw. In 
all these cases, wine is extolled as an accessory to love or con- 
versation ; the wild ahandon of bacchanality — the adoration of 
the goblet for the wine — of the wine for the god of wine — is denied 
to all but the native of the forest. All the southern festive 
24 



2t8 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

chants are more or less erotic; tlie true drinking song is 
essentially and exclusively northern. Is not this true, Dr. 
Gauden ?" 

" Distinctions of that kind, I imagine," replied the Doctor, 
" run through the whole moral and intellectual character of the 
two races, and may be detected in most of their monuments." 

"They are, no doubt, discoverable," continued the Count, "in 
their architecture and religion — two things which a nation rarely 
borrows, and never without modification. The Greek and Latin 
mind was fond of the definite, the sensuous, and the precise ; it 
held to the apparent and the known ; it rested in the external. 
The Gothic spirit, nurtured in uncoped forests, and cradled amid 
shadows and concealment, longed always for the vast, the un- 
defined and incomprehensive ; it craved communion with the 
spiritual and unseen ; it sought ever the inward and mysterious. 
The Greek temple, accordingly, is regular and complete ; it ex- 
presses the whole idea which it contains ; the Gothic cathedral is 
aspii'ing, unrestricted, and indistinct. In one, the effects of form 
are studied ; in the other, the impression of spirit predominates ; 
the one is the complacent shaping of a learned artist ; the other, 
the dark utterance of a poet, restless with the movings of an im- 
mortal soul, and charged with the uneasy inspiration of unde- 
veloped life. In the creed of the people, the same thing appears. 
The gods of the Greeks had finite forms ; their" genealogy was 
knowni, their character and functions were all settled. The god 
of the Goths was an infinite spirit, inconceivable in origin, un- 
fathomable in nature. The Christian religion, a religion of mys- 
teries, was preached to the Greeks, and was rejected by them ; it 
was planted painfully and slowly among the Romans ; it spread 
like the unchained wind among the Goths, and never became 
national but among them. Do we not see in this the ineffaceable 
distinctions of race ? The southern nations at once materialized 
their religion ; first by the erection of a human representative and 
vicegerent of God ; afterwards, by image-worship, saint-worship, 
and the prominent adoration of the human mother of God ; and 
among them the reformation has never prevailed. The north in 
the palmiest hour of Popery was always Protestant, that is, imma- 



^TAT. 20.] REQUISITE NUMBER. 219 

terial, in feeling and doctrine, however Catholic it may have been 
in government ; the trumpet of Luther was a blast of the forest, 
and its echo died away there. The antagonist characteristics 
of society in the east and the west are also developed in the his- 
tory of religion. The Goths were domestic, and Christianity, a 
religion of peace and union, was adapted to them. The Arabs, 
the Saracens,' and adjoining nations, were lawless, wild, and 
haughty, and the proud and fierce religion of the crescent suited 
them. In those eastern lands in which the cross had been esta- 
blished, it was wholly and permanently subverted by the Maho- 
metans ; and that defeat has been the marvel of the pious, who 
have not considered that a social religion must necessarily yield 
to an anti-social one, among an anti-social people." 

"Those natural differences have not been so much studied as 
they ought to be," said I. "They might be of infinite value to 
the statesman." 

"The appreciation of them," replied the Count, "is the foun- 
dation of politics, and the failure of every political scheme may 
be attributed to the neglect of them. One nation is distinguished 
from another of the same origin by variations similar to those 
which divide one race from another. The love of popular pri- 
vilege which belongs to the extreme west, takes, in France, the 
form of love of equality ; in England, of liberty ; in America, 
of both liberty and equality. Smaller differences, I presume, run 
down through every district, shire and town in each nation. 
But the grand distinction in European nations is that of north 
and south, and in every reform must be kept in sight. The 
south must be regenerated on the plan of France under Napo- 
leon : one member supreme, all under it, equal. The north must 
be revived on the model of England, by a pyramidal system of 
descending classes, distinct but united, like the orders in a Pal- 
ladian palace, and each having privileges in inverse proportion to 
the number which constitutes the class. For this distinction is 
to be taken, that though the south accepted the form of feudality, 
the north only, that is, England and Germany, was imbued with 
its spirit. And the principle of the feudal system was personal 
freedom and social connection — the independence of the indi- 



280 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

vidua], and the subordination of the rank. The baron was the 
subject of the king, but his castle was his throne ; the peasant 
was the subject of the baron, but his cottage was his sanctuary. 
These dependencies were easily maintained in war, for they were 
its support. The danger Avas that they would decline in peace ; 
they were only to be preserved in peace by the appointment of 
civil institutions which should be germane to the feudal spirit. 
This, in England, was done by the fiction of land tenures, which 
led to courts, baron and leet, and by the trial by jury, which is 
the Maxima Charta of British liberty. The English did not 
want equality, but independence; and the rights of the people 
among them, though rights of inferiority, were equally definite 
with those of the nobility, and for purposes of distinction equally 
valuable. If Germany is ever raised up, it must be by establish- 
ing a pacific system cognate with the feudal ; it must be by fol- 
lowing the English plan, moderated, of course, from its present 
development ; the chord must be the same, but the key lower." 

"Your remark is striking and, I have no doubt, just," replied 
Dr. Gauden. 

"It is, I suspect," continued the Count, "from the want of 
fit civil institutions that the feudal relations of emperor, baron, 
and peasant, have got, among us Germans, so hopelessly en- 
tangled. The encroachments of the emperor have broken the 
mesne sovereignties, and the peasantry suffers in consequence. 
Many of the German nobility have inherited from their ances- 
tors the obligations of princes, and from their fathers the powers 
of but private gentlemen. It will be a long task to restore the 
balance." 

"Benton," said Rolle, who had not probably heard a word of 
this long discourse between his neighbors, " Benton, why do you 
suffer your cook to put mustard in the macaroni ? Cooked mus- 
tard is horrible." 

" Why," replied the other, " my cook has a great many sorts 
of ability, and among the rest a good deal of irritability ; and if 
I were to act upon the democratic maxim and assume the ' right 
of instruction,' I fear he would not 'obey,' but 'resign.' But 



^TAT. 20.] AGE OF A COOK. 281 

there is so little of the obnoxious article, that I am surprised 
that you perceive it." 

" Perceive it ? If it were inserted in Homoeopathic doses I 
should perceive it. But why don't you turn such a man out of 
the house ? I wouldn't retain such a man in my service a mo- 
ment. How old is he ?" 

"Thirty-two." 

" Too young, too young. His aspirations are yet too tumul- 
tuous, and his energies too undisciplined. He cannot have 
attained that splendid repose of passion amid the ardor of vigor- 
ous power, which is demanded by nature for the ruling of an 
empire and the cooking of a dinner." 

" Ude fixes at thirty the period of life at which a man may be 
pronounced a perfect cook. That seems to be the climacteric 
of the intellect." 

" Sir, you are to take a distinction. There are two climacter- 
ics of the intellect, one between twenty-six and thirty, the other 
at forty ; the period of the first is the zenith of energy ; the second, 
of ability. For any enterprise requiring hardy zeal and intre- 
pidity ; for the resolute execution of a daring project ; for all 
that demands nerve and force ; the powers of man are in their 
perfection at about twenty-seven or nine. Alexander, Charles 
the Twelfth, and Lord Byron, who wrote his poems in the same 
spirit that the others fought their battles, performed at this age 
their finest achievements, and all of them coincided in dying at 
thirty-six. Shakspeare, the all-knowing, has observed this psy- 
chological truth : lago tells us when he commences his diabolics, 
' I have looked upon the world for four times seven years. ' On 
the other hand, no man can be prepared for the performance of 
a truly great and elevated work ; one enacting the full develop- 
ment and exercised freedom of every mental faculty, and the 
long-trained and dependible strength of every power, before the 
age of forty. At that age Wieland fixed the time when a man 
is best fitted for a high literary work, and sat down to the com- 
position of Oberon. At that age, which Dryden calls ' the full 
summer tropic of his genius,' Yirgil wrote his best work. After 
that age Burgh, who had surveyed mankind with accuracy, for- 
24* 



282 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

bade any one to enter on any new undertaking, perceiving that 
that was the era of execution, not enterprise. I should there- 
fore conclude that while an artiste of thirty-two is admirably 
fitted for grand and gigantic experiments in his profession, he is 
yet unsuited for that last and noblest effort of human genius ; 
that loftiest exhibition of serene might ; that most worthy task 
of Olympian powers : the cooking of a dinner." 

" We are told in the Acts of the Apostles, that Moses was 
full forty years old when he began his mission ; Mahomet was 
thirty-nine. Forty, also, was the consular age among the Ro- 
mans." 

Leaving this conversation to proceed as it pleased, I turned 
to Dr. Gauden, who was sitting on the other side of me, and 
after our political disquisiton with the Count, had fallen into a 
kind of revery. There was a fine landscape by Gouldsborough 
hanging on the opposite wall, in front of him, at which he was 
looking intently, and muttering to himself some verses of Fla- 
minius, with the usual intermixture of fretful nods. 

" Umbrae frigidulas ! arborum susurri ! 
Antra roscida ! discolore picta 
Tellus gramine ! foutium loquaces 
Lymphas ! garrula aves ! arnica Musis 
Otia ! — mihi si volare vestrum 
In sinum superi annuant benigni ! 

That must be when I come back." 

" It is to be regretted, I think, Doctor," said I, falling in with 
the current of his thoughts, " that the Latin writings of the Italian 
scholars who clustered about the morning light of modern letters, 
are not more known and studied than they are. There is some 
exquisite poetry among them." 

" Beautiful, sir, beautiful. In descriptions of nature they are 
unrivalled. The history of the literature which Le Clerc happily 
calls demi-ancient, remains to be written. Roscoe's books are 
beneath contempt." 

" I am glad to hear you say so. Tor I have always held the 
opinion that they were infinitely overrated. I never could get 
through them : they would not take hold of me." 



^TAT. 20.] POLITIAN— JOHNSON. 283 

"His popularity," replied the Doctor, "illustrates a remark 
of Horace Walpole : that grace will save any book, and without 
it none can live long. The gracefulness of his style and the ele- 
gance of his manner have given him an acceptance with 'the 
general,' who hate to think and are careless of knowing. But 
he is always superficial and often mistaken ; he says more in a 
sentence than he could stand by in a volume. He sketches, but 
does not portray, and guesses where he ought to investigate ; 'il 
effleure lorsquHl devrait percer.'' His taste was delicate rather 
than just : and his mind, though polished, was feeble and one- 
sided. He could argue agreeably, but could not judge accurately. 
He lacked that strong grasp of mind, that stern watchfulness 
against prejudice, and that self-denying disinterestedness of senti- 
ment, which are essential in exploring the mines of history." 

"Among the many services," said I, "which Pope rendered 
to literature, his edition of some of these poets should not be 
forgotten ; if it showed no learning, it proved at least his taste, 
and his interest in letters. I have sometimes regretted that 
Johnson did not prosecute his intention of editing Politian." 

" No doubt he would have done it well ; he edited Browne's 
' Morals' with consummate ability. But to tell you the truth, 
Politian is no favorite of mine. His prose is certainly elabo- 
rately classical ; but his poetry is irreclaimably dull. His per- 
sonal character is anything but agreeable ; he was intensely and 
meanly selfish ; always cringing and begging. He was insatiable 
of favors and never seems to have had the least gratitude for 
them. The wife of Lorenzo, you know, turned him out of the 
house. It is odd that Mrs. Parr did the same thing to that 
splendid brute, Porson. I should have been glad if Johnson 
had edited Petrarch, or Yida, or had written a history of that 
age. That is a work which is yet to be done ; the men of that 
time are still doubtful in reputation ; posterity has formed no 
definite conclusion about them. Such a man would have settled 
opinion once and forever. Let theorists sneer as they may, there 
is not a critical notion of Johnson's which the nation has not 
accepted. Brydges and Bowles have wi'itten their volumes, and 
Coleridge has lectured his worst, exhausting logic and his 



284 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

hearers ; but not a decision in ' The Lives of the Poets' has 
been shaken : that book stands in the history of literature like 
a rock in the ocean ; the waves and waters of opinion may beat 
around it and beat against it, but it stands, ' and as it stands, 
forever shall stand on.' " 

"I have sometimes speculated, Doctor, on the effect which he 
would have produced on English literature, if, with the reputa- 
tion which he had at his death, he had lived on till our own 
times. Modern poetry and fiction would have no existence. 
Byron, and "Wordsworth, and Bulwer, would have been crushed 
like peascods. I suspect that the whole radical system, with its 
liberty and utility, would have been scattered to the winds ; for 
his actual power was immense and his possible power scarcely 
calculable. For cogency of reason ; for simple ability to coji- 
vince; no man that ever existed may be compared with him. 
He was a wonderfully great man." 

" Sir, his greatness cannot be overstated. Form the highest 
notion that you can have of powerful reasoning or of brilliant 
wit, and then turn to some of his political pamphlets, or to cer- 
tain conversations which I could name in Boswell, and you will 
find that the reality excels your wish. His conversations are to 
my judgment even more wonderful than his writings. He might 
have said of Boswell what Mahomet said of Ali, ' I am the city 
of knowledge ; and he is my gate.' Boswell deserves to be re- 
membered, for his appreciation of Johnson showed a fine spirit, 
and the meannesses he submitted to, were the sacrifice of dignity 
to wisdom. And he will be remembered with an immortal in- 
significance, for he is like the beccafica which the stork takes 
upon his back and carries to heights which its feeble wing could 
not attain. His powers were undoubtedly most respectable; 
for I take it to be the, not so facile, business of a biographer, 
simply to give you a clear and satisfactory impression of the 
subject of his book, and this he has done ; you see Johnson as 
he lived ; in the rude grandeur of his noble nature : ' Nihil hie 
elegans aut venuslum, sed ingens et magnificum, et quod placet 
magnitudine sua et quddam specie immensitatis,'' as Burnet 
Bays of a view from the shores of the Mediterranean." 



JEtat. 20.1 PARR— WARBURTON. 285 

" Johnson's independence or defiance of the restraints of re- 
fined life," said I, "though it exposed him to cavil, was certainly 
of service to the freedom of his mind, for it enabled him to 
appreciate the world with stern and conscientious truth. Every 
gentleman, even the most strong-minded, is habitually under the 
influence of cant ; and when the judgment is once resigned to 
prescription and usage, the limits of the thraldom cannot easily 
be defined. Johnson stood alone ; early a widower, — with no 
children and no relations near him, — an acknowledged exception 
to all society, — he was free from the faintest fetter of custom, — 
' Custom, that result of the prejudices and passions of many, and 
the designs of a few, that ape of reason, who usurps her seat, 
exercises her power, and is obeyed by mankind in her stead.' 
He was thus enabled to look down upon the establishments of 
the world with an independence which few others could hope to 
attain, and where he bore testimony to their value and justice, 
his evidence had incalculable force." 

"It is a pity," said Dr. Gauden, "that Parr and others who 
imitated the great moralist, should have copied the ' brute part 
of him^ so closely. You see clearly that Johnson's rudeness 
was like the horns of the Fauns and Satyrs, a natural excres- 
cence ; while Parr's, like those of Bacchus, was an ornament 
which he could remove. In his Salmoneus' wieldings of the 
thunderbolt, he gave too much of the thunder and too little of 
the bolt. He was a man of small stature ; still, when he ' sum- 
moned all the energies of his reason, and put forth the whole 
power of his mind,' he could 'do considerable.' His dedication 
of the Warburtonian's Tracts is the most splendid eifort of 
elaborate mahgnity that the world has ever seen. But he had 
always the cramped movement of one acting a part, and was still 
farther dwarfed by acting a part too high for him. Johnson 
strode with the step of a giant ; Parr stalked like one accoutred 
in the seven-leagued boots of a dwarf. Parr huilt up his mind 
on a great model; Johnson's mind grew up, and he swayed it 
as we sway the limbs of our body. Parr struggles to get up to 
his subject^ as a clumsy swimmer to get upon the ice ; Johnson 
has always conquered his topics, and holds them up with the air 



286 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^tat, 20. 

of a man going to grate a nutmeg. You find, too, about the 
latter,, that natural humor and honest bonhommie which results 
from the self-composure incident to a thoroughly great mind. It 
may seem an odd fancy, but there is something in Falstaff which 
puts me in mind of Johnson." 

" Warburtou was more his fellow than any other eminent man 
of his country. But he differed in many qualities, and where he 
differed, there he descended." 

" Warburton had logic rather than reason, and had more of 
mechanical intellect than moral power ; he was forcible rather 
than strong, and energetic rather than robust. He used the 
sling ; Johnson, the mace. Johnson was like a man who, walk- 
ing through a forest, meets a lion there and slays him : War- 
burton was like one who, happening to pass an amphitheatre as 
he is going through a city on important business, throws down 
his bundle in the street and steps in among the beasts, from pure 
love of a broil : as much praise must be given to the unosten- 
tatious manliness of the one as to the gladiatorial vehemence 
of the other. A great mind is stable by its very weight ; War- 
burton floated about like a gossamer, — over men's heads and in 
their faces. No truly great mind ever tampered with error ; it 
has a strong love of truth, — an intellectual affection, ' qui s^at- 
iache au vrai par une espice de sympaihie,' as Fontenelle says, 
'et sente le faux sans le discuter.^ Notwithstanding the high 
and rich delight which the study of his works has afforded 
me, — for, like Lelius in ' The Arcadia,' he showed more skill in 
missing than others did in hitting, — yet my own opinion of him 
is much what Voltaire has expressed about Charles of Sweden, 
'homme unique plutot, que grand homme, admirable pluibt 
qu'd imiter.' Bentley, I think, had more of the great Cham's 
unminted wealth and sinewy vigor than any of these men : but 
the most Johnsonian mortal now alive, and out of sight the first 
man that wears calf-skin, is Mr. Webster. What a towering 
monument of mind is he ! He may be termed a real statesman 
according to the law's definition of the realty, — 'permanent, 
fixed and immovable, which cannot be carried out of its place.' 
But there are many things in this world that are of great value 



^TAT. 20.] AVEBSTER. ^St 

and no use ; and Webster is one of them. Every man has his 
fault, and greatness is his. But he is a glorious creature. What 
a pity he is honest ! Sir, we'll drink his health !" 

"With all my heart 1" 

" Mr. Webster undoubtedly has the misfortune of being too 
great for his condition. There is in the American system no 
niche for such a statue. Such a man must be often disappointed, 
and die at last of a broken heart." 

"England has secured an eternal supremacy for her great 
statesmen over those of other nations by the wise device of en- 
rolling them in the peerage. Men may talk as they will of the 
majesty of intellect or the kiugliness of character ; there is no 
greatness which the world will always and inevitably acknowledge 
save that of title. The moment a man is inscribed in the quiet 
rolls of the nobility, he assumes in the instinctive and ineradi- 
cable admission of all men, a superior nature. He may be a 
parvenu and a brute, but his name clothes him, in the imagina- 
tion of all, with the splendor and homage of feudal dignity, and 
Tudor and Plantagenet float before our eyes." 

"True: and in England that natural fealty always prevails 
over the opposing popularity of democratic aspirants, and 
enables the balance of contest to be on the side of the aristo- 
cracy ; so that the English have generally the satisfaction of 
being, at least, enslaved by a gentleman. Britain's feudality has 
saved her from the political Fetichism of America, whose devo- 
tion only bows to beasts. It has also kept her from the leaden 
tyranny of wealth, which has here set up its altars unopposed — 
Temples were the banks of Greece : Banks are the temples of 
America." 

" Of England and America we must say, 'magis pares quam 
similes.' The system of civility which prevails in the two 
countries is different. England is a lake, calm and dignified, 
shaded by willows and fringed with daisies. America is a river, 
that dashes along, often muddy and always agitated, rarely 
graceful and never dignified, but in this wild and free impetu- 
osity an emblem of all that is bold, and daring, and spirited in 
man, and sometimes, too, not failing in its unfettered energy to 



288 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

work out a high and earnest beauty. Our greatness lies in that 
enterprise and activity of which we can give no vouchers in the 
drawing-room. The Englishman walks in a narrow sphere, and 
in that sphere excels what his colonist can do in any one of the 
departments in which he figures. The American is a flambeau 
that stinks in a drawing-room, but burns admirably on the race- 
ground: the Englishman is a wax-candle, elegantly bright in 
its station, but which, if moved out of its place, flares des- 
perately." 

" Byron, in Manfred, has sketched the bitter degradation to 
which a noble mind like Webster must submit, that would mingle 
in the strife of~public life." 

" Byron doubtless described what his own brief experiences in 
parliament had taught him. He seems to have been ambitious 
to bear a part in the politics of his country, and I suspect that 
to his failure in that enterprise is to be attributed much of the 
bitter hate and defiance which has been popularly attributed to 
domestic misfortunes. That his nature sympathized with the 
daring in action rather than the tender in sentiment, is manifest 
from his Alp, his Corsair, and indeed the whole circle of his 
heroes. There was rankling in his bosom some great and inde- 
pendent irritation ; — the stings of an ambition which the honors 
of poetry could not gratify. His expedition to Greece is indi- 
cation of the same thing. But his character is, and will remain, 
a riddle. Dark and demoniac as were some of his qualities, he 
had many traits of a noble nature. His spirit was like the form 
of Eblis, in Beckford's marvellous creation ; ' sa figure etait celle 
d'unjeune Jiomme, dont les traits nobles et reguliers, semblaient 
avoir ete Jietris par des vapeurs malignes. Le desespoir et 
Vorgeuil etaient peints dans ses grands yeux, et sa chevelure 
ondoyante tenait encore un peu de celle d'un ange de lumiire ; 
. . . une main delicate, mais noircie par la foudre, . . . une 
voix plux douce qiCon aurait pu la supposer, mais qui portait 
la noire melancholic dans Vame.^ Yirtue and vice contended 
for his soul, as Michael and Satan for the body of Moses." 

" Byron's poetry was never to my taste. He and his set are 
a kind of poetical Brahmins, teaching universal hatred and con- 



^TAT. 20.] BYROX. 289 

tempt towards all their fellow-creatures, and nourishing in 
themselves, as a religious duty, pride, selfishness and all un- 
charitableness. The 'impar sihi'' is a charge which lies not 
against him, for his morals were as bad as his manners. I do 
not deny his talents, but I have no sympathy with his subjects. 
' He that striketh an instrument with skill,' says Hooker, ' may 
cause, notwithstanding, a very unpleasant sound, if the string 
whereon he striketh chance to be incapable of harmony.' As 
long as Spenser and Dry den survive I shall have little inclina- 
tion to read a Newgate Calendar in verse, with a running ac- 
companiment of Satanic applause, and an occasional episode of 
beautiful blasphemies." 

"But Byron," said I, "exhibits his heroes in colors so little 
agreeable, and paints the sufferings of remorse so darkly strong, 
that few, I imagine, would be seduced by the examples which 
he lays before them." 

"Sir, you mistake. 'The fly,' says Herbert, 'that feeds on 
dung is colored thereby.' What we read becomes a part of our 
mind, and, even if we condemn, the thought is there, and is 
working its evil. But in fact no one reads this poet without 
admiring him, for the feelings which he excites are so strong 
that the book must be thrown down in disgust or devoured with 
transport. The natural element and protection of the virtues is 
calmness and sobriety ; all excitement endangers innocence ; all 
familiarity with stimulating feelings and engrossing interests, 
perils the heart's uprightness. Ignorance of vice is the safest 
virtue ; to shun temptation is the best deliverance from evil. 
The passions are like those demons with whom Afrasiab sailed 
down the river Oxus ; our safety consists in keeping them 
asleep ; if they wake we are lost. Byron rouses a whirlwind 
of emotion in the mind ; and it is much if the moral integrity 
is not wrecked in the tempest. Navagero, a noble Venetian, 
burnt a copy of Martial once every year : Childe Harold 
deserves the same apotheosis. If the size of Lord Byron's 
form be measured by the shadow which it has cast over 
the land, immense must be his mental proportions. He has 
done incalculable evil to the young, and more mischief, I sus- 
25 



290 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

pect, to the world than any other single cause now in action. 
Moore may foster some of the details of vice, but Byron im- 
plants the master sin,. — the demon-father of a countless brood, 
. — Pride. At a period when the independent spirit of the times 
requires the bridle far more than the spur, he teaches his young 
disciples to follow their own headstrong will, and to defy all 
moral restraint, — thus feeding the most fatal serpent that lurks 
in the breast, and for which there is sustenance enough, in all 
conscience, supplied by the rebellious suggestions of the native 
disposition. ' Lust seizeth us in youth,' says one whose thoughts 
are 'quaint and solid as the best yew-hedge,' 'ambition in mid- 
life, avarice in old age ; but vanity and pride are the besetting 
sins that drive the angels from our cradle, ride our first stick 
with us, mount our first horse with us, dream with us at night, 
wake with us in the morning, and never at any time abandon us. 
There is in the moral straits a current from right to wrong, but 
no reflux from wrong to right ; for which destination we must 
hoist our sails aloft and ply our oars incessantly, or night and 
the tempest will overtake us, and we shall shriek out in vain 
from the billows, and irrecoverably sink.' Believe me, we need 
no incentives to the development of this inherent evil of our 
nature. We are well assured that dark results are reaped from 
such a planting. For my part, as Gray says of Rousseau and 
his guild, ' I can be miserable enough without their assistance,' 
and there I leave these heautoustimoroumenoi to those who can 
read them without being worsened." 

"At all events," said I, "if Byron must suffer the 'suspexerunt 
viri prohi' of Pontanus's epitaph, he is fully entitled to the 
' amaveru7it bona miisce. ' No man can read Manfred or Don 
Juan, and withhold from the poet all that his admirers claim for 
him on the score of genius. Manfred's being caught by the 
Chamois Ilunter as he attempted to throw himself over the pre- 
cipice, and afterwards, when describing to the witch his unsuc- 
cessful efforts at self-destruction, mingling this reality with the 
fancies of a mind 'peopled with furies,' and saying that ' an all- 
pitiless demon held him back, — back by a single hair which would 
not break,' is worthy of the hand which drew King Lear." 



^TAT. 20.] BYRON. 291 

" The worst consequence of authors who are popular from 
some great peculiarity," said Wilkins, striking into the conver- 
sation, " is that they raise a host of followers, who wear the 
badge, but lack the blood which gives that badge a meaning. 
Bulwer in this manner is the literary offspring of Lord Byron, 
as the Mahometans believe the pig to have been generated from 
the excrement of the elephant. Clemens Alexandrinus tells us 
that Alexander the Great desired his sculptor to represent him 
with horns, willing to bear a deformity which associated him 
with the gods. Bulwer mimics Byron's depravity in the hope 
of enjoying Byron's notoriety, forgetting that an ass wears a 
cloven foot as well as a devil." 

"Byron, to be sure, has a wilder energy and a manlier sweep," 
said Dr. Gauden, " but the matter of their works is much the 
same." 

" I have no fondness for this philosophic radicalism ; this 
moral system which sets out with denying all that the world has 
accepted, and opposing all that the world has established. 'Si 
projicere cupis,^ says the great African bishop, ' primo firme 
id verum puta quod sana mens omnium hominum attestatut\^ 
Bacon concludes his great work by repudiating all charge of 
wilful eccentricity and opposition : ' if I have in any point re- 
ceded from that which is commonly received,' says he, 'it hath 
been with the purpose of proceeding melius and not in aliud; 
a mind of amendment and prolicience, and not of change and 
difference ;' and Johnson makes it the worthiest praise of New- 
ton that he stood apart from the multitude, not by deviating 
from the path, but by outstripping them in the march. The 
world may be wrong, and yet we may mistake ' reverse of wrong 
for right :' 

'Tis, by comparison, an easy task 

Earth to despise : but to converse with Heaven — • 

This is not easy. 

It seems to me, that the principle of these men, if they had any 
principle, was, eternally to differ for the sake of distinction. 'A 
good wife,' says Damis in Lessing's Young Author, ' I do not 
expect. And if I cannot have a very good, I would rather 



292 FRAiiMEXTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 211. 

have a very bad one. An eveiy-day woman, neither cold nor 
warm, neither this nor that, is not fit for a man of letters. If I 
cannot have a wife who will assert a place in a future disserta- 
tion De bonis eruditorum uxoribus, let me at least have one 
that will not escape a writer De mails eruditorum uxoribus. 
Anything but obscurity; anything but mediocrity.' In the 
same spirit, these writers seem to say : ' if we cannot be men- 
tioned as those who have written in the best taste, we will be 
named as those who have written in the worst ; if we cannot 
have the purest sentiments, we will have the vilest ; anything 
but obscurity — anything but mediocrity.'" 

"Bulwer — to use a happy phrase of Walpole," said Wilkins, 
" always writes in issimo. He uses the dialect of Brobdignag. 
If a man's mind is uncomfortable, it is with him — a hell I If one 
sustains a loss which will probably never be made good, it is, in 
his language, a curse and an immortality 1 His exaggerations 
would make Heraclitus laugh through his tears. The passion 
which is stamped on his pages exists always rather in the words 
than in the sentiment. It is not that excited feeling finds vent 
in burning eloquence which swells and glows like glass under 
the breath of the blower, but he seems in the dearth of energy 
to pour forth these blustering syllables for the purpose of being 
himself roused by them to ecstasy ; to work himself up like a 
bully by beating the air. This style is in description what rant 
is in acting — always growing mightier, as true passion wanes. 
There is a certain calmness about the acme of feeling — a security 
which seems to indicate that the suffering transcends the powers 
of language to utter it, or the strength of the sensibilities to 
cope with it — a composure in the midst of the most awful scenes 
— which it is the highest effort of art to portray ; the rage and 
the violence belong to inferior grades of sensation, and are the 
exhibition of meaner artists. When Shylock, in fear of a loss, 
lances wild threats upon the city's charter, you see that he ia 
strongly excited : when the whole prostrating truth bursts upon 
him, he says, 'send the deed after me : I am not well.' Cora- 
pare this with Croly's Cataline, with the manner of Maturin, 
Godwin and Bulwer, and you will perceive the difference be- 



^TAT. 20.] BULWER. 293 

tween the master and the man. As a general remark, by-the-by, 
our elder classics exhibit the best specimens of energetic feeling 
temperately expressed. Lord Byron may be taken as a speci- 
men of power united with fury — the might and vehemence of 
the whirlwind. Bulwer has copied all his disorder and only 
forgotten his strength ; he is a prose Lord Byron — without his 
genius." 

"In looking at the productions of all first-rate artists," said 
Gauden, " Shakspeare, Homer, and Scott, for example — it is 
clear that in every case they are above their subject — they are 
never overmastered by a passion which they would develop. In 
the midst of the contest, in the height of the agony, the narrator 
is cool and judging ; his own sympathies absolutely sleep, and 
his creations are altogether impersonal. That the excitement 
shall be in the action and not in the author — that the moving 
representative shall be the calm exhibition of a troubled scene 
and not the troubled'^^exhibition of a calm one — is, I apprehend, 
the exjyei^imentuin crucis of art. The strife of Byron and the 
confusion of Bulwer are the pictures of an ordinary interest mir- 
rored in a disturbed fancy. Homer's song of the battles on the 
banks of the Simois is as passionless and calm as the reflection 
of them in the stream might be. His poem shows action in 
repose, boundless passion never tumultuous. Doubtless the in- 
terest must originate with the author, but his business is to 
transfer it all to his subject. If it be conceded — and I take it 
to be undeniable — that genius is but the highest art, and that, 
invention being equal, the palm must be given to him in whom 
judgment is most despotic, we settle the question of merit, when 
we say that Shakspeare and Scott write like the masters of pas- 
sion, and Byron and Bulwer like its slaves." 

" Bulwer chiefly aspires to the praise of portraying character," 
said Wilkins, " and it is there that his failui'e is most ridiculous. 
His system is Rochefoucauld caricatured. He confounds the 
concentrative and generalizing quality of a descriptive character 
with the broad and diversified substance of a dramatic one. In 
an epigram we may say, metaphorically and extremely, that a 
man never means a compliment 1)nt ho mnkos an insnlt ; but to 
25* 



•294 FKAGMENTAL LITEKARY DISQUISITIONS. [Mtat. 20. 

introduce a Lord Aspeden actually making every speech through- 
out a long conversation, an elaborate rudeness, is totally to mis- 
take the limits of art : it is to forget the person in the character ; 
to lose the man in the manner ; to evaporate the substance into 
the quality. It may be said that in many of the plays of the 
old stage-writers, Shakspeare among the number, the personages 
are mere embodiments of a feeling or idea — what Ben Jonson 
calls personified 'humors.' But this great distinction is to be 
taken, that Richard and lago are characters of passion, and a 
passion may well leaven the whole individual into its own simili- 
tude ; whereas Aspeden, Brown, and that cluster in the ' Dis- 
owned,' are but the character of manners, and manner is an 
affectation which can but flit over the surface, not ' enter into 
the soul.' The qualities of nearly all his heroes are mixed in 
impossible combinations : the flippancy of one, the philosophy 
of another, and the feeling of a third are selected ; and, with the 
address of an Orford and the morals of a Shippen ; the pru- 
dence of a sage and the gayety of a boy ; a fop's extravagance 
and a warrior's fortitude. — are all assigned to a common man 
of the world. This, as Pirauesi told Fuselli, is not designing 
but building a man. It is a want of psychological truth. A 
Henry Pelham may have really existed, and may again exist, 
but the novelist has to do with generalities ; he is to describe a 
species, not an individual. Fact is the field of the historian, 
and probability of the romance-winter : and when the latter errs 
against verisimility, although he is supported by facts, he violates 
truth as much as the other does when he contradicts documents 
for the purpose of making a credible story. Herein Bulwer 
wanders farther than Byron ; for the poet's characters being in 
wild and imaginary scenes may be warped into a strangeness 
which we cannot venture to deny ; but the novelist's- personages 
being on the terra firma of a brick pavement, and breathing the 
common air of cities, are within a far narrower law. Lara, in 
his wild solitudes, above and beyond the sympathies of the 
world, is in a very different predicament from Henry Pelham, 
Esquire, No. — St. James's street, who reads newspapers, and 
keeps appointments by St. Stephen's clock. Besides, Byron's 



^TAT. 20.] BULWEK. 295 

people are self-consistent ; they ai-e under the control of some 
one great impulse, and not swayed by a score of opposing ones. 
Wolfe, Glanville, Mordaunt, and all that class of choking gen- 
tlemen, are creative lies ; the author does not say ' the thing 
which is not,' but he images the thing which cannot be. They 
are, like Macbeth's dagger, 

A false creation, 
Proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain. 

His greatest blunder, however, is the character of Aram. His 
object in that story was to show that a man might be guilty 
of a great crime, such as murder, without having his nature de- 
praved by it ; and to demonstrate this he falsified the character 
of a man whose story proved precisely the reverse ; for the real 
Aram was a dirty and vulgar scoundrel. Fortunately, Bulwer's 
theory is as false as it is mischievous, for wherever he has de- 
serted fact he has erred from truth." 

"Bulwer forgets," said Dr. Gauden, "that most men as well 
as women, 'have no characters at all.' He overlooks that class 
which 'Nature makes by the gross, and sets no mark upon 
them ;' a class which largely shades the light of life, and should 
find a place in the tablet of the faithful portrayer of humanity. 
He willingly essays the complications of a Hamlet, but the 
exquisite nothingness of a James Gurney is beyond his skill. 
He discerns 'on the shoulders of every lackey a head that might 
"^J"orm the counsels of cabinets. His heroes have their dinners 
announced by men who might put the Due de la Rochefoucauld 
to the blush. Every jockey salutes them with an epigram, and 
every landlord converses in syllogism. His very animals have 
characters : tot canes, tot ingenia. His philosophy, though it 
seems to me but a trick of words, commends him I believe to 
many, who, captured by anything that is brilliant and novel, do 
not stop to inquire if it is true. When I daily hear perspicuous 
writers, such as Addison, Goldsmith, and Scott, put aside as 
superficial thinkers, and the tripod given to those who are con- 
sidered deep only because they are obscure, I am tempted to 
keep in mind a curious but most valuable remark of Boling- 



296 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

broke upon that point. ' To speak the truth,' says that saga- 
cious writer, ' though it may seem a paradox, our knowledge on 
many subjects, and particularly on philosophy and metaphysics, 
must be superficial to be real. This is the condition of humanity.' 
If Scott has no system of human action, it is because human 
action cannot be systematized. But one might pardon even 
greater charlatanry than Bulwer's, if it were set forth in tolerable 
English. His style, with its ' varnish of words and its garnish 
of flowers,' is decidedly the most vicious of the age ; I can for- 
give almost anything but the one-legged poetry of staggering 
prose. He does not use comparisons for illustration ; simile 
seems to be with him a mode of writing. It puts me fairly out 
of temper to see a man circling round some thin notion in 
endless gyrations of metaphor. Scott uses tropes very freely, 
but his flowers have always the significancy of an eastern 
garland." 

"All Bulwer's conceptions," said Wilkins, "lack the freshness 
of true creation. There is a total want of generosity in the 
author's mind. It is in this wide nobility of sentiment, this 
sympathy with the free and the foreign, that Scott stands so 
pre-eminent. All his characters are sparkling with the dews of 
natural life. When Richard met Saladin and was challenged 
by the Saracen to a trial of strength, he undertook to sever with 
his sword, an iron bar of an inch and a half diameter. One of 
his attendants warned him of the magnitude of the enterprise, 
and his own enfeebled health from illness. 'Peace, villain!' 
cried Richard, settling himself firmly on the ground and looking 
round with fierceness, ' Thinkest thou that I could fail in Ms 
presence ?' I doubt whether Mr. Bulwer would have understood 
the feeling." 

" We may safely venture to admire personally the man who 
writes so," said I, " for he must have had a touch of the crusader 
in him, who describes crusaders so well. Bulwer never succeeds 
in placing his characters independent on his own mind, and look- 
ing at them quite ah extra. He shows them to us as they seem 
to him, not as they were ; we see them mediately, not in their 
own bold individuality. He maps out their natures too analyti- 



^TAT. 20.] TRUTH AND POPULARITY. 29T 

cally; in short, he describes, rather than exhibits them. The se- 
cret of the failure is that he is too much of a metaphysician to 
be a dramatist. But, after all, say what we may, he is popular 
beyond all rival, and I invariably bow, in all literary subjects, 
to the judgment of the public. Storace used to say that the 
merits of no musical composition could be considered as settled 
until it came to be ground upon the hand-organs." 

"If I had not taken so much of Mr. Benton's good wine," 
said Wilkins, " and if I was not afraid of disturbing the audible 
slumbers of my excellent friend, Mr. llolle, I should enter at 
large upon the subject which you moot. As it is, I will only say 
that it is not in the nature of a truly great work that it ever can 
be popular. IS'othing of exalted merit is capable of being j^re- 
sented to the public ; ' The Creation,' for example, could never 
come upon a hand-organ. That which lies in the way of the 
mob enough to receive a full hearing, must necessarily be very 
inferior. There is no music in Yankee Doodle. If I were to 
frame an extreme theory upon the subject, it should be upon the 
principle of the Greek philosopher. 'This is right,' says Epi- 
curus, 'precisely because the people are displeased with it.' In 
many matters it must be so; 'the eyes of the multitude,' said 
Plato, ' are not strong enough to look upon truth ;' and generally 
where they blink most there is most truth. It is constantly 
happening that in literature as in every thing else, those voices 
which make up public opinion, are baying darkly where there is 
no game; but the blunder is finally discovered. 'Truth,' says 
my Lord Coke, ' may peradventure by force for a time be trodden 
down, but never by any means whatsoever can she be trodden 
out.' " 

" Your doctrine," said Gauden, " would be 'qualis sopoi- fessis^ 
to poor Chandos of Sudeley, — the jjeer-less Sir Egerton Brydges. 
He has reached the conclusion that all good books are unpopular, 
and by a very harmless non dislrihutio medii, resolved therefrom 
that all unpopular books, like his own, are good. The theme of 
his musings is still the hope of Milton : 

At ultimi nepotes, 
Et cordatior oelas, 



298 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [J^tat. 20. 

Judicia oequiora rebus forsitan 
Adhibebit, integro sinu. 

The temper of his intellect was, in fact, too feeble for the violence 
of his impressions. I have sometimes heard it said in derogation 
of Lord Byron's merits, that he was the poet of temperament, 
rather than of intellect. I admit the distinction between these 
sources of inspiration ; but in this case, the delicacy of the tem- 
perament seems to me to exalt the marvel of the intellect. For 
immense mental power must have been I'cquired to constrain 
such ardor of excitement to intelligent expression. Passion fur- 
nishes materials for creation, but is, in itself, its antipodes. In the 
reasoning fervor and logical fury of the Giaour, I am impressed 
even to awe, by the fearless might of intellect which every where 
copes and conquers the volcanic vehemence of feeling. To break 
up into meaning words the inarticulate roar of suffering, — to syl- 
lable the yell of anguish, is like snaffling a tornado, or tying knots 
in a thunderbolt." 

" But when I hear of these neglected authors praying for jus- 
tice, I think of the Regent's reply to a similar request of Vol- 
taire when he had been slapped for being insolent, ' mais elle est 
faite:'' 

" Poor Sir Egerton 1" said Wilkins. " The history of his mind 
and fortunes has matter that might give us pause. Born with 
talents of no common order, and feelings and sensibilities of the 
most delicate texture, — the stuff that bards are wrought of ; im- 
pelled to a career of mental exertion by a most passionate ardor 
for distinction, and aided in it by all the advantages which high 
rank and abundant wealth could furnish, he has, after a long 
life of toil and struggling, to look back over a dreary track of 
painful effort and bitter suffering, and forward to a prospect of 
oblivion. After seventy-five years of incessant literary labor, he 
is known to the world by a caricature in Frazer, a philippic in 
the Edinboro', and a passing encomium from Southey. Yet the 
old man, an exile in a distant land, with broken foi'tune, and un- 
strung and embittered mind, may teach to every author a lesson 
that shall make him a 'sadder and a wiser man.' With all his 
endowments, why is not his statue in the temple of Fame ? 



^TAT. 20.] SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 299 

Merely from waut of patient meditation and resolute self-study ; 
merely because he did not master his genius and control his 
temperament. When he experienced an inclination to literature, 
he sat down to rummage among dusty antiquities ; "w'hen he felt 
the stirrings of poetic sensibility, instead of watching them, and 
seizing a directing theme to the production of feeling beauties, 
he only speculated about their existence in all great poets, and 
thereupon concluded that he too was a great poet. He should 
have grappled with his emotions, and controlled them to crea- 
tion.* I verily believe, that by intense observation of the work- 
ings of his own mind, Brydges might have risen at length to such 
nervous conceptions, as live and move, and have their being in 
Byron's pages. He studied books far too much ; had he burned 
his folios, the flame might have lighted the fire of a great poetical 
genius. When he felt, he should have analysed ; then he might 
have reproduced. The want of calm reflection, and the pain en- 
countered in confronting one's own mind, have generated an 
impatient habit of thought. He is unwilling to enter upon a 
mine of deep inquiry ; if a subject of discussion starts up before 
him, he defers it to a more convenient season, or lets the reader 
know that he is preparing a separate work upon that point. He 
thinks .in fragments ; and, uninclined or unable to continue long 
upon 'the wing, ever fails to reach any thing truly great." 

"What you say is very just," said I; "he has the wildness 
rather than the fulness of the pulse of genius. But after every 
aliatement, I would still give my hearty vote that he should take 
the very highest place among our prose authors. There is no 
writer whose works I have more frequently in my hands, and 
none to whom I feel more inclined to make those grateful acknow- 
ledgments which every man owes to him who has improved and 
amused him, who has informed his understanding, and gratified 

* Since these paragraphs were penned, the unfortunate baronet has inherited 
another and a darker title, "per legem terrce." His last years were passed in 
great poverty at Geneva; where a recent Galignani states that he lately died. 
The sneer of ridicule was the best return his literary efforts met in life; hut, 
methinks, "they must have hearts very tough and dry," to use the quaint ex- 
pression of Hooker, who will now refuse to shed a tear over the sorrows of this 
high-minded, but most unhappy man. 



300 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^tat. 20. 

his taste. He is tlie English Montaigne, with vastly stronger 
blood. His knowledge of the world is thorough ; his knowledge 
of the human heart singularly deep and searching. His critical 
perceptions are unerring ; his critical principles, I think, wrong, 
but they never affect his conclusions, for he never follows them 
but in general speculations ; he says, for example, that poetry 
should be natural and unconstrained, and adds that Gray is one 
of the greatest of poets. His letters on Lord Byron constitute, 
in my judgment, the finest piece of particular criticism that this 
or any language contains, though he assigns the noble poet a 
much higher rank than you or I would concede to him. His 
style is perfect ; formed upon no model, but growing up from 
ceaseless and easy employment of the pen, it is rich, but not 
loaded ; natural, but full of vigor ; it fascinates by its refinement, 
and compels by its strength. The harsh points which he often pre- 
sents to the reader will prevent his ever being much of a favorite 
with the multitude, but kinder qualities endear him to the man 
of letters. He seems, in truth, to possess a two-fold nature ; of 
which one part is querulous, irritable, egotistical and assuming ; 
the other, gentle, generous, and genial. That side of his mind 
which is turned towards men, is like the side of a high promon- 
tory that regards the sea, rough, abrupt, and unpleasant of ac- 
cess : but that which looks towards poetry and the free fields of 
genius, is like the other side which lies towards the land, and is 
fanned by the mild inland breezes, soft, smooth, and sunny, 
mantled with roses, and refreshing to the reposer. To despise 
golden opinion is too much his failing. But he is a fine thinker ; 
and a judicious selection, in two or three volumes, from the 
whole mass of his works, would form a treasury of wisdom. 
He is, moreover, a true poet, and that he has achieved no great 
poem, is the fatal result of a false poetical theory. If, instead 
of writing fourteen thousand lines in four years, as he oddly 
boasts, he had written but fourteen, his fame had been secure. 
He has not attained the rare and fine art ' de /aire difficileinent 
des vers J " 

"It is queer," said Wilkins, "that Brydges and his brother 
veprinters should imagine that the rescuing which they gave to 



^TAT. 20.] SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 301 

perishing works, was of any service, or should think that they 
benefitted letters while they made a point of limiting their issues 
to 'only twenty copies,' or in some cases that I remember 'de- 
cern exemplaria sola.'' Surely, such an impression left the book, 
so far as the public was concerned, the same sealed treasure that 
it found it. Those bibliomaniacs were a worthless set." 

"Harmless, i-ather," said Dr. Gauden. "They amused them- 
selves highly, and they injured nobody. They erected typography 
into one of the fine arts, and thus extended the sources of inof- 
fensive pleasure. The investigation of a date or an author's first 
name, is very capable, I assure you, of delighting and even im- 
proving the best faculties of the mind ; and to bear off an ' editio 
princeps,^ from a circle of panting bidders, in the rich conscious- 
ness of envied ownership, is a pleasure which a sage would 
scarcely venture to ridicule, or a divine to condemn. To be un- 
profitable is not the worst quality of a mundjfne occupation ; 
and I would that mankind in the pursuit of honor, wealth, and 
power, were always as honorably or as wisely employed as was 
the Roxburghe club in discussing ekes and algates^ 

" Sir Egerton's poetry," said Benton, " has one merit ; that of 
being intelligible ; a merit which is certainly rare and probably 
great ; for, as a general rule, the best writing is the most intelli- 
gible. Pope and Addison every body can understand ; but what 
can you make of the poetry of Shelley or the prose of Coleridge ?" 

"Shelley I abandon," said Wilkins, "for I never read him. 
But of Coleridge it must indeed be confessed, that if he has the 
truth, he has also the obscurity, of an oracle. Yet, amidst the 
perplexed and tangled disquisitions with which his writings 
abound, you meet occasionally with a splendid simile or a glo- 
rious burst of poetry, which produces upon the irritated mind 
the same startling delight, the same rich relief which occurs to 
him who, wandering through a thick and undergrown forest by 
moonlight, comes suddenly upon a clear, amphitheatral opening, 
where the moon is reposing calmly on the silent grass, and shed- 
ding its silvery lustre upon the green-topped trees ; he pauses 
for a moment to gaze on the heaven-decked scene, and breathe 
in freedom the expansive air ; a spring of love bursts from his 
26 



302 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [Mtxt. 20. 

heart ; lie blesses nature for her gladness, and plunges again into 
the thicket, refreshed and invigorated in soul. The obscurity 
of Herand and Hazlitt proceeds from a very different cause 
from Coleridge's ; for ' true, no meaning puzzles more than wit.' 
Hazlitt's thoughts are like the illuminated letters in the old 
manuscripts ; so overlaid with ornaments that you cannot get at 
the meaning ; and when you do fathom it, it is but the fragment 
of the sign of an idea." 

"Let not Coleridge," said Mr. Rolle, "that 'spirit, still, of 
height unknown,' be classed with that servile company who wore 
his livery and disgraced his name. In the store-house of criti- 
cism there is no line which has measured the depth of his seeing ; 
no glass has yet described the height of his imaginings. With 
his works before you, it baffles you to comprehend and to mea- 
sure the extent of his powers. His mind was a different faculty 
from that of other people ; it was an extraordinary combination 
of perception, feeling, and imagination, and all these qualities 
seemed to be exerted at once ; it was as if he had observed with 
his heart and thought with his fancy. You look upon his dis- 
coveries in the tracts of truth, with the surprise and awe with 
which you would watch a man performing operations by means 
of a new and peculiar sense. He stood at the centre whence 
poetry, morals, and metaphysics originate, and he commanded 
them all. He became a poet by piercing all the mysteries of 
philosophy, and a philosopher, by treasuring all the revelations 
of poetry. It would take a life-time to exhaust his discovei'ies. 
His sentences are heavy with rivelled thought ; they are swollen 
with pregnant conceptions." 

"Coleridge thought in metaphor," said Wilkins, "and that 
makes a brilliant but not an accurate thinker. His invention 
was endless, but he was destitute of judgment. He could ana- 
lyse in detail inimitably, but he conld not compose or embrace 
many rival suggestions. A master intellect habitually contem- 
plates every thought in its relations to all other kindred or op- 
posing thoughts ; the entrance of Kehama into Padalon is an 
emblem of the manner in which a great mind reaches truth. 
Coleridge could invent theories, but he could not choose between 



iETAT. 20.] COLERIDGE. 393 

them ; he could broach opinions, but he could not tell their 
value. He could build systems and he could defend them ; but 
he could not demonstrate the truth. In fact, Coleridge was a 
poet ; the greatest, perhaps, that ever lived ; but he was no more 
than a poet. He carries into all researches the spirit of a 
dreamer by the lonely woods. All his thoughts have been 
bathed in the tide of the passions ; his reasonings seem to be wet 
with sensibility. His breast is momently swept with the gusts 
of feeling ; his sentences seem to tremble with feeling. There 
never was a mind in which the materials of poetry lay in richer 
or more splendid profusion." 

" As a poet for this life, I prefer "Wordsworth to all his con- 
temporaries," said Rolle ; "I hope to read Coleridge in another. 
I look upon Coleridge as one who, in the cycle of progressive 
being, had got ahead of the rest of mankind by two or three 
stages of existence. I imagine, however, that if Pericles were 
alive, he would prefer Campbell to all the poets of this time. 
But if you require feeling in poetry, there is no one richer in the 
wealth of the heart than Mrs. Hemans. With what luxurious 
Sybaritism of sensibility she atmosphered her mind ! She seems 
to have realized to the fancy the delicious impossibilities with 
which Yolpone tempted Celia : 

Your bath shall be the juice of July flowers. 
Spirit of roses and of violets !" 

"I cannot join in the high admiration which you express 
of Coleridge," said Dr. Gauden. "I confess myself unable to 
take the distinction which is very usually admitted between the 
man and the author. I cannot respect even the intellectual 
qualities of one who lived, like Coleridge, in open defiance of 
the most solemn and sacred duties of life. There must have been 
something very unsound in the perceptions of a mind that did 
not see and admit that the obligations resting on a husband and 
father were paramount to all personal aspirations after Fame or 
even Wisdom. If virtue and poetry are inconsistent, no man 
who has just notions of the real value of reputation, would hesi- 
tate which to renounce. 



304 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

Integra sit morum tibi vita; Ilaec Pyramis esto: 
Et poterint tuinulo sex satis esse pedes." 

" I fully admit tlie weiglitiness of the suggestions which you 
make," said Wilkins ; " but before we condemn a man like Cole- 
ridge, let us consider the mighty temptations which assailed him. 
Let us remember how nearly we have been destroyed by the 
puny passions which have played through our breasts, and let 
us not mock the mighty ruin over which the hottest ploughshares 
of hell have been urged. The strong seductions and fierce trials 
of the heart of genius who shall estimate ? Such men are in a 
raging tumult even from their very birth ; they are living always 
in the midst of tempests, and never, during life, enjoy the blessing 
of clear vision or calm touch. They are never masters of them- 
selves ; but their will is swayed, like a wave-mounted ship, by the 
surgings of the sea of passion. What does an ordinary mind 
know of the inner storm and whirlwind, as it were, of restlessness, 
• — the craving after excitement and high action,- — the inability 
to calm the breast and repose in fixity,. — the wild beatings and 
widowed longing after sympathy, — which rack those hearts which 
are born with the ocean's temper and the lion's mettle ? The 
feeling which attends these high endowments is like a caged 
panther, that rages to leap upon some satisfying object, and if 
barred from that, boils and lashes tumultuously in its den. Then 
consider how hard a task it is for the lofty intellect to learn hu- 
mility,. — for the blood-royal of genius to be tutored, — for the far- 
glancing, eagle-eyed, eagle-spirited soul to be schooled in the 
dull lore of duty. About the heart of genius the passions gather 
as to a stately midnight banquet : hard-breathing Ambition, 
frowning, stone-eyed,. — deep-masked Love, scattering from his 
censer dimming fumes and enervating odors, — coarse- vested 
Pride, with curling lip, ready to pluck his eye out if it be ad- 
mired, — lean Sensibility, quick-glancing, pale-cheeked and viil- 
ture-beaked. Existence is to such men anguish ; every pulse is 
pain ; their breath is a sigh. The inward and incessant strife of 
the spirit, — the instinctive jar and discord of the feeling, — the 
inevitable chasing of the soul even in its calmest hours and 
quietest moods, — will move the heart to tears without a grief. 



iETAT. 20.] TEMPTATIONS OF GENIUS. 305 

Shall we wouder that this constant suffering makes them reck- 
less, and saps and shatters the moral being ? It is the severe lot 
of genius that its blessedness should be its bane ; that that wherein 
its heavenly franchise gives it to excel mankind, is the point 
wherein it should be cursed above its brethren. For its high 
privilege is to taste of pleasures inappreciable to mortal tongue ; 
in the empyreal privacies of lonely thought to enjoy the manna 
of angelic natures; in the fragrant bowers of fancy to feast on 
dream-food, — 

Ou lionej'-dew to feed, 
And drink the milk of Paradise. 

Thus is its taste depraved by its celestial birthright : and thus 
does its craving after rich and strange delights render it ever 
restless amid the pale joys and cold and quiet offerings of the 
earth. To suffering also it brings the same exquisite sensibility 
as to pleasure ; it is Apician in its griefs ; pursuing and extract- 
ing the taste of woe through all its hidden forms. The spirit that 
abides in the still valleys of contented mediocrity can know as 
little of the gigantic sorrows and sufferings and allurements and 
goadings of a great soul that mounts amid the shelving cloudage 
of the highest skies, as the shaded pool can know of the deep 
sweeping currents of the sea, or the swelling whirlpool of a gulf. 
Let the shore thick-strewn with the wi'ecks of gallant ships, and 
let the haggard and storm-stained state of the vessel which has 
escaped, declare the perils of the deep ; and let the utter de- 
struction of Burns and Byron and Rousseau and Mirabeau, and 
the rent and shattered escape of Johnson and Hall and Collins, 
confess that genius is an awful gift. It is, indeed, a noteworthy 
fact that no man possessed of that character of genius which is 
attended with very susceptible feelings, has ever escaped moral 
shipwreck, except under the pilotage of ardent religion. Long 
was Coleridge the sport of the wayward winds of passion ; but 
he found at last the quiet harbor. Doctor, can you remember 
his opium, when you read his letter to little Kinnaird ?" 

"When I call to mind," said Dr. Gauden, "the history of 
the Popes and Spensers of another day, and the Scotts and Sou- 
26* 



30G FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

theys of our own, I must hesitate before I admit that genius 
always requires this special dispensation. If you would compare 
the moral tone of true genius with spurious, — of that poetical 
ability which springs from the soundness of the head, with that 
which is generated by the corruption of the heart, — contrast 
Lord Byron with Mr. Southey. Byron's enervating interest is 
like the fatal sweetness of the panther's breath and body ; Sou- 
they's untainted vigor has the fragrance of the free mountain air 
of virtue : the one degrades and belittles the reader ; the other 
e^jalts and strengthens him: the one is 'naturally inclined to be- 
lieve the worst, which is the certain mark of a mean spirit and 
a wicked soul;' the other is generous with 'the princely heart 
of innocence.' Southey is of the royal lineage of ancient genius, 
and has the robust and warrior-blood of the old kings of wisdom : 
with the lascivious pleasing of modern favorites, — the perfumed 
softness of these immortals of a season, — he has no kindred. 
Most of us ' destine only that time of age to goodness, which our 
want of ability will not let us employ in evil ;' Southey has con- 
secrated to virtue the best vigor of his manly days. With one 
or two exceptions, I confess that I rarely trouble myself to open 
any of these late volumes of elegant literature ; and when I do, 
I usually find that no faculty is exercised except my memory. 
The remains of the old temples at Athens have served as the 
materials of all the structures that have been erected there during 
many centuries, and the quarry of Pentelicus has not been opened 
since ''Phidias and Praxiteles digged beauty from its bosom. 
The material condition is but an emblem of the intellectual ; the 
moderns have never visited nature as their ancestors did, but 
have been contented to transpose, to vary, and reset the gems 
which their bold predecessors seized from the treasury of her 
wealth. While I allow the moderns to dictate upon all subjects 
relating to the economy of life, — since, that matter being founded 
on experiment, the latest production is likely to be the best : — 
for all that adorns and charms existence, for elegance in poetry, 
and purity and strength in prose composition, we must turn to 
the models of another time. The throne of science may be 
founded in cities — the resorts of manhood ; — but the shrine of 



^TAT. 20.] THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY. gOY 

the muses is in the valley of our childhood. Thither will we re- 
tire from the mechanical and 'busy hum of men,' to listen to 
those masters who 'instruct without clamor, and heal without 
stripes.' The fresh vapors that curled about the mountain-tops, 
melted in the morning of our existence into streams of crystal 
purity, with which the narrow and muddy rivulets that gurgle 
at mid-day, may not be compared. Life is not long enough for 
all knowledge, and while we linger among the moderns, we may 
be neglecting the wisdom of antiquity forever. Non refert 
quam mullos, sed quam honos habeas lihros; muUitudo lihro- 
rum onerat non instruit, el satius est paucis auctorihus te 
tradere, quam errare per mullos. I am at least sure of meeting 
among the ancients, what will neither vitiate my principles, nor 
deprave my passions ; but much that will better fit me for the 
duties of life, the only thing that is valuable in life. The sound- 
ing extravagances of Byron and his fellows, are to me but as 
music to a deaf man's ear; and I could wish," added the doctor, 
rising, " that on my tomb might be inscribed a sentiment like 
that on Evelyn's : ' In an age of extraordinary events and revo- 
lutions, he learned that all is vanity which is not honest, and 
that there is no solid wisdom but in real piety.' — But there is 
Benton, more fast asleep than ever on the sofa ; ' vino ciboque 
gravalus.' It is time to go. Take a seat in my carriage which 
is waiting." 



A DIALOGUE IN A LIBRARY. 

The Greek Anthology — The Superiority of the Moral Science of Heathenism to 
that of Infidelity — Modern Popular Education — Moral and intellectual train- 
ing — A life of Meditation and Action. 

" Pleasant, indeed, very pleasant it is to us — to recur for a brief hour to the themes of 
those sweet and silent studies in which we passed our youth ; and to take a second 
draught at the fountains of almost all that is just and leautil'id iu human language." — 
The QuARTtRi-v IUview. 

Some days after my friend Benton's dinner, I had rambled 
through the country several miles. As I was returning home, 
my course happened to bring me in the neighborhood of a person 



308 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

whom I liad known some years before, and whom I had often 
tlionght of calling upon, without ever accomplishing my purpose. 
I determined to take advantage of the opportunity, and look in 
upon him. He was one of that old race of scholars, whose num- 
bers time is daily lessening, without the prospect of a futrue 
crop. The tendency of mind in the present day is from thought 
to action. From various causes, among wiiich the rapid exten- 
sion of popular privilege, and the increasing excitement of the 
daily press may be prominently named, the whole system of life 
in all its departments is in a hurried and agitated state. In 
times not remotely past, a literary man in his country residence 
was completely separated from all disturbance, and dwelt calmly 
circled with the quiet of his books : now, the gazettes bring be- 
fore his view scenes of perpetual movement on the political world, 
and a host of magazines present a prospect of still more stirring 
action in the literary community ; and with his interests thus 
quickened, and his passions thus roused, he will not be able to 
return to the gentle studies and passive contemplation which 
once beguiled his peaceful hours. When, with the welfare of 
humanity clinging strongly about him, and the concerns of truth 
alive within his bosom, he sees the pennon of the cause he loves, 
now rising, now bending, in the turmoil of the conflict, he will 
pant to join the struggle, and aid the interests he so warmly 
cherishes. 

Mr. Woodward was far from being one of the race of mere 
bookworms, an unprofitable company of perverse idlers. Still, 
mere acquisition of learning had been his profession. He was 
a thoughtful and acomplished man, of ingenious rather than for- 
cible talents, of more sentiment than vigor of reason, and of a 
finer delicacy in perception than power of invention. He was 
now considerably past the noon of life, and his feelings had be- 
come regulated by the discipline of philosophy, and his opinions 
mellowed by meditation and experience. He had from boyhood 
been a student ; consecrating to learning the passion of his youth, 
the power of his manhood, the leisure of his age. He had been, 
during some part of his life, a traveller ; but travel to a man like 
him, far from a relaxation or a loss, was but a period of more 



^TAT. 20.] THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY. 309 

diligent application. I found liim " the mild, the learned, and 
the good ;" arrived at 

That better stage of human life, 
When vain imaginations, troublous thoughts, 
And Hopes and Fears have had their course, and left 
The intellect composed, the heart at rest, 
Nor yet decay hath touched our mortal frame. 

When I entered his library, he was reclining on a sofa, and 
musing, with half closed eyes, over a volume of the Greek An- 
thology. He received me with polished courtesy, for he belonged 
to a family of honorable rank, and had in former years mingled 
a good deal in society, and I began the conversation with a re- 
mark on the work which he held in his hand. 

" Of all the soothing words of the wise," said he, " which have 
come down to us from the ancient world, there is no volume 
more a favorite with me than this of the Anthology. I look 
upon it as the minute-book of antiquity's confessional. The 
poems here collected were not intended for the strenuous world, 
nor were fitted to mingle among the household literature of Athe- 
nian gaiety ; but they are the wild, and hurried, and abrupt so- 
liloquies of deep and mighty spirits, who mutter the inward re- 
vealings of consciousness in some moment when the under eddy 
of feeling, setting in with the upper current of habit, throws up 
the sentiments that had lurked unseen beneath the surface ; soli- 
loquies, which like the story of The Ancient Mariner, seem uttered 
almost in despite of self. Through all of them there runs that 
tender sadness which always marks a deep thinker upon man's 
condition. In their exoteric pleas, the voice of the ancient is a 
voice of joy and eager invitation to the feast of life ; here you 
have collected in golden vessels the waters of that bitterness 
which ever wells from the fullest fountains of earth's purest joys. 
The ancients compared with the moderns, seem like the actors 
on a lofty stage, compared with the homely spectators in the pit. 
In their histories, their epics, and their tragedies, you perceive 
a buskined dignity of sentiment, a heroic elevation in every rank 
of life, above the every-day familiarity of our times, the loftiness 
of people declaiming in blank verse. You find in their greater 



310 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

writings none of the humbling confessions of later days, none of 
the used appearance of modern literature, as of the gloss worn 
ofF, the dew dried up ; the reserved muse emits never the moan 
of sympathy, or the winning plaint of personal emotions, but 
speaks always in the tone of distant command, or dignified in- 
struction. But in this volume the secret all comes out. Hero 
we have their real and naked sentiments of their own state, the 
desponding prospect, the regretful retrospect, the signs of a laden 
and troubled heart, the evidence ' in spite of pride' that ' life to 
every one that breathes is full of cares.' Here we meet the feel- 
ing confutation of the ' bold denial hourly urged amid the wrang- 
ling schools,' the vague and unsatisfied aspiration, the indefinite 
doubt, the startled and confused suspicion, — arising when the real 
and ideal clash, when conscience jarringly conflicts with belief, — 
that all is not right in the common creed, that there is some in- 
explicable blunder in the established system. Many of these epi- 
grams I passed by in my youth, concluding them destitute of 
meaning J but now, in the sober twilight of declining life, I find 
in them a deep and supernal meaning, like the wild words of one 
who has spoken with a spirit. And thus have I often found it, 
that the discoveries of the intellect are comprehended by the 
reason, the creations of feeling only by the heart ; and that the 
understanding is independent on circumstance ; sensation its 
slave. Aristotle is penetrated by the thinker in the field and in 
the closet , Plato's reasoning of the heart, logic of the fancy, 
woven in the mystic hour of nature's ecstasy, must be viewed 
from the same moral point where its frame stood. Place your- 
self on the lonely promontory of Sunium when the last rays 
of the sun are gilding with a melancholy lustre the few faint 
clouds which survive his race, and the stillness of earth is like the 
silence of Heaven, and gaze upon the fathomless sky veiled in a 
faint mist of light. Then will thy spirit float upward to the 
highest heaven, and converse face to face with his ; and thy soul 
shall breathe the thoughts which are as pure, as subtle, and as 
lofty ' as the ether which floats around the throne of the Al- 
mighty.' " 

"The style of composition in these epigrams," said I, "seems 



^TAT. 20.J THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY. 311 

to be altogether peculiar, and has never been imitated, perhaps 
could not be, successfully, in any modern tongue. They are the 
most finished, the most nicely wrought, the most strictly class- 
ical of all the classics." 

" They have a simplicity and a sincerity," replied Mr. Wood- 
ward, "which no later writer has attempted to reproduce. They 
are impressive from their composure ; their weight arises from 
their reserve. The gayer of them have something in them ex- 
tremely unmodern. The sensation of humor appears to have been 
unknown to the Greeks ; their perceptions and tastes were too 
refined for so gross a feeling, for a gross and unworthy one I 
think- — in the sense in which I use it — it commonly is. These 
compositions are purely free from it, and yet there is in their 
cautious avoidance of force, their naive shrinking from effect, 
something more diverting than real humor. In modern epigrams, 
the last line is the one on which the poet toils ; all the others are 
prepared for it, and it is the most vigorous and highly wrought. 
It is otherwise here ; the earlier lines are melodious and spirited, 
the last, generally, prosaic, pedestrian and tame. And here lies 
the humor, that when something sonorous and decisive is ex- 
pected, the matter is thrown off with something familiar and 
almost undignified ; the effect resembling that produced when a 
fool in the old English drama, having fixed attention, and raised 
expectation by promise of important disclosures, suddenly blurts 
out some droll truism in homely prose ; or when a clown, having 
undertaken to jump over a barrier, gains the goal by quietly 
walking under it." 

"It is a mournful consideration," said I, "for them that wish 
well to mankind, to reflect how much of the wisdom of the world 
lies unemployed, how much of the bullion of truth, which the 
sages have mined from knowledge, and stored in books, lies un- 
coined to use, how rarely from the conquered provinces of intel- 
lect, captives have been brought home to men. That ancient 
fund of cumulative truth, which we call 'the wisdom of ages,' 
whereof the materials are experience, the refiner is sagacity, and 
the result is gnomic wisdom, is the younger world's birth-right, 
and it has been voluntarily renounced. These gems have been 



312 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^tat. 20. 

dug from the mine to be buried iu the grave ; they have been 
drawn from ignorance to be entombed in forgetfulness. The 
charts are all before his eyes, but the pilot, though inexperienced, 
never consults them. And the philosophers in this matter are 
as blameworthy as the mob at large ; for if the latter have disre- 
garded many of the results of opinion, the former have neglected 
more of its materials. ' Multa ignoramus, quae non laterent, si 
veterum lectio nobis esset familiaris.'' For in dust-covered vo- 
lumes of the old speculative, and the modern skeptical writers, 
there lies much debased wisdom which might be profitably puri- 
fied, many suggestive glimpses which might be advantageously 
pursued, much broken and imperfect truth which might be use- 
fully combined and completed. These men standing by the cir- 
cumference, though the position were a false one, saw and 
guessed at many important things which we at the centre, 
though it be the vantage-ground, might never think of. But 
the world is both an unskilful and an ungenerous combatant ; for, 
not content with fairly vanquishing the foe in the field, it ex- 
terminates after it has overthrown. When Christianity had 
triumphed in argument and in fact over the ancient pagans, and 
the later infidels, and the enemy were become as dead men, arms 
were not laid down, and the war did not cease : and none, 
whether from fear or hati-ecl, visited the hostile camp to see what 
treasures might be found there. We should at least have the 
Hebrew sense to despoil the vanquished, if we cannot rise to the 
Alexandrian wisdom of enlisting them. We hew, however, the 
unburied carcass into food for hounds, and break the tombs of 
the erring prophets." 

" The course you hint at," replied Mr. Woodward, " would be 
wise enough for philosophers, but 'non cuivis contigit adire 
Athenas.' The world is, for itself, perhaps, not foolishly prudent ; 
for it is the nature of error never to be extinguished, but only 
to be smothered ; and if the damper is not kept closely down 
the flames may again burst forth, or at least the ignorant med- 
dler may get his fingers burnt among the ' suppositos cineres.' 
Beneficial as is the study of mere morality, I think it had better 
not be pursued among the mere moralists of anno Christi times. 



^TAT. 20.] HEATHENISM AND INFIDELITY. 313 

But no such objection lies to Greek and Roman ethicists, and 
amongst them the guides in this important path would be more 
safely sought. For morality, as distinguished from religion, 
may be defined a system of rules foi- the conduct of men, deduced 
by human wisdom from human experience, and having for their 
object and sanction the well-being of men in the present world. 
Of systems of morality thus founded only on human reason, it 
migkt at once be anticipated that those constructed before the 
revelation of Christianity would be purer, more consistent and 
entire than any whose growth is from modern wisdom, — distin- 
guished from religion, as these last always must be, and opposed 
to it, as they too often are. You will understand me when I 
allude to Paley on the one hand, and Helvetius and Hume on 
the other. The former took his conclusions from Scripture, and 
tied, not grafted, them on philosophy ; and in many instances, — 
as, for example, his chapter on The Sabbath, — ^his results, though 
perhaps just, cannot possibly be deduced from his premises. 
The latter fare still more unfortunately ; for in their anxiety to 
avoid the appearance of borrowing any thing from Christianity, 
they have often plucked from their systems what was the legiti- 
mate growth of the 'human mind divine.' In resiling from the 
temple of revelation, they have often stumbled by^the pit of 
error. Many a fair growth of the soil of reason is torn up be- 
cause its branches, extending into the territory of divinity, it 
might be supposed that its roots had derived sustenance there- 
from. Reason thus opposed to Christianity is maimed of its 
finest limbs. Such was not the position of the ancients ; their 
morality was purer morality as it approached the doctrines of 
the Saviour. Christianity, like a vast edifice, has covered, the 
whole ground, and the earth-born plant beneath it that would 
seek the light, must twist itself into unnatural deformity; the old 
systems grew up freely and unshadowed, and often instinctively 
tended toward revelation, as certain plants by nature regard the 
sun. The judgment, too, of the ancients in these matters was 
the clearer from their not being disturbed by contention, nor par- 
alysed by doubt. Never checked by fear, and never stung by 
conscience, — serene and passionless, the mind of Cicero was con- 
2t 



314 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. {Mtat. 20. 

sistent and wise ; but infidelity liad wronght in the breast of 
Bolingbroke a storm, an anarchy of contending emotions. His 
understanding is always turbulent and unsteady, — sometimes 
paralysed by instinctive doubt, and sometimes maddened by its 
unavailing opposition. He has granted every thing ; he has de- 
nied every thing : one while mocking in demoniac defiance, and 
anon trembling in an agony of fear. The burning light of his 
powers, unconcentrated and ineffectual, was scattered by the 
gusts of passion ; the fire of Cicero's genius was a calm flame, 
that reveals little, but its aspiration is to heavenward." 

"Even if the position of the two classes," said I, "in regard 
of opinion, is the same, their relation in respect of feeling is dif- 
ferent : like that of the ascending and descending travellers who 
meet at the middle of Mount Blanc. Hume distinguished against 
Christianity, and Plato built towards it: their station is the 
same, their view opposite. When Bolingbroke and Atterbury 
met at Calais, the one blessed and the other cursed his country." 

" On another account," continued Mr. Woodward, ".the perusal 
of the heathen writers on ethics is more beneficial than the study 
of contemporary morahsts. I mean the priority of the former 
in point of time to the promulgation of revealed truth. The im- 
perfect revelations of St. John the Baptist were fit preparations 
for the teachings of Christ ; had he preached the same defective 
doctrines after the ascension, they had been mischievous, as cal- 
culated to displace the other. When we take up a book of 
recent ethics, we expect something distinct from Christianity and 
but dubiously consistent with it, and its perusal detaches us, and 
perhaps aliens us, from the authority of Scripture : but we lay 
down our Cicero to take up our Bible, and pass from the right- 
minded inquirer to the divine demonstrator." 

"I fully agree with you," said I, "on the value of moral 
science as a distinct system, and in the preference which you 
assign to the ancients. I neither discern the wisdom nor re- 
spect the prejudice of those who, like the monks of old, would 
erase the memory of the Latin bards, and write in its stead 
the knowledge of its own more sacred dogmas. To imagine 
that any sane man will rest in these and reject Christianity for 



^TAT. 20.] HEATHENISM AND INFIDELITY. 315 

them, were as vaiu as to suppose that any one would be willing 
to exclude the light that now illuminates the world, and guide 
his steps by the rays of the sun of some other system. We legis- 
late not for Bedlam or for Norwich. " 

" One of the objections," said he, "to the value of moral rules 
is, that religion is a 2^rinciple of conduct, that precepts have lost 
authority, and that obedience to them may even be injurious as 
dethroning the principle. How this argument can be admitted 
while the ten commandments are still read in the churches, I am 
at a loss to discover. I would answer it by saying that if the 
precepts raise the right acts, the acts will draw the right principle 
after them. Good actions create good principles, far more cer- 
tainly than good principles occasion good actions. When the 
heart is won to virtue, and seeks to perform the requisitions of 
morality, it seeks to perform them on Christian grounds and for 
Christian rewards. He that is pure is ready to be pious." 

"Another answer to the objection," said I, "would be that 
precept may be subsidiary and assistant to the principle, and 
even in many parts illustrative of it." 

" In all parts suggestive of it. ' We frequently fall into error 
and folly,' says Johnson, 'not because the true principles of 
action are not known, but because for a time they are not re- 
membered ; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the 
benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into 
short sentences that may be easily impressed on the memory, and 
taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.' 
Under this view, I would be glad that, for the attainment of that 
sort of conduct which lies between virtuous and prudential, and 
is at once a duty and an advantage, the classical poets were 
more carefully studied in youth on account of the sententious 
wisdom they contain, and not merely as grammatical exercises, 
and for the gratification of lettered ostentation. In exquisite 
common sense, and elegant condensation of thought, tJie Roman 
poets have found, save in Pope, no imitator among us. The 
light that irradiates this path must of course be drawn from 
human sources, for its object is to encounter vice and folly with 
their own earth-weapons, — to reason down the sophistry of vice, 



316 FRAGMfeNTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

to ridicule to silence the giddy mirth of folly. Here antiquity 
possessed a superiority over us. For this knowledge is to be 
drawn from what Sir Thomas Browne has called 'that universal 
and public manuscript that lies open to the eyes of all,' — the 
manuscript-book of nature and of man ; ' and surely,' he con- 
tinues, ' the heathens knew better how to join and read these 
letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these 
common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the 
flowers of nature,' or read it in the workings of the heart of man. 
Those instruments of worldly sagacity and natural penetration 
which they polished till they became at once beautiful and 
piercing, are laid by in our temples, to rust and grow dull by 
disuse. Certain minor virtues there are which Scripture has 
not descended to inculcate, and which human reason must be 
called in to teach, as Diogenes lighted a candle at mid-day to 
discover manliness. It is true that patriotism may be. learned 
from Christ's weeping over Jerusalem, and friendship inferred 
from the Saviour's preference for St. John. But to feel these in 
their strength and in their loveliness, — in their beauty as af- 
fections, and their power as duties, — we must listen to the song 
of the ancient minstrels. A single line from Horace will urge 
millions to die for their country, and another of Virgil will bring 
a tear to the eye of the far-wandering patriot, and teach him 
even in death to think on his delightful native land." 

"The objection," said I, "which has been made to the poets 
of a lighter cast — ministers of pleasure — is more futile than all. 
Little effect can they have upon our minds ; the joyousness of 
their joy has long been turned to sadness, and the wild laugh of 
gaiety comes to our ears like an echo hurled back in mockery. 
Christianity, if it has not altered men's minds, has changed the 
whole chord of men's feelings ; the commotions of nature which 
attended the crucifixion were but a type of the revulsions that were 
wrought in the breast of universal man. The motives to enjoy- 
ment adduced by all their poets frighten us from the banquet. 
Drink to-day — it is the burden of all their festive poetry ; drink 
to-day, for to-morrow we are not. The Christian, like the 
Pagan, may despise death ; but this boldness bebngs to different 



^TAT. 20.] HEATHENISM AND CATHOLICISM. 211 

occasions. Their genealogy will point out the distinction. The 
Pagan indifference is the offspring of ignorance and the sister of 
apathy. The Christian fearlessness is the daughter of Faith." 

"Besides the loss of wisdom and knowledge," said Mr. Wood- 
ward, " which you have observed that we incur by limiting our- 
selves to the literature of our own religion, the injury to true 
feeling, to all that concerns the heart — is vastly greater. Man, 
historically, lives in fragments. His present being is detached 
from all that has gone before, and he loses the experience which 
centuries of curious and opposite circumstance might give him. 
As Wordsworth has gone back to the darkling aspiration and 
boundless conceptions of childhood, and found therein a proof 
of immortality, so would I go back to the infancy of man, and 
trace m the changes thence to manhood the wideness of his spirit 
from the many phases it has shown. I would regard the mytho- 
logy of those times as past 'away, but not the men nor their re- 
lation to that mythology. I look on myself as a moment in the 
existence of man, and regard Paganism as one of the views which 
in my youth / took of nature. And the rather because Heathen- 
ism and Catholicism, each after its sort, are more favorable in 
the view they take, to the cherishment and growth of religious 
feeling, than Protestantism and our times ; and I am unwilling 
to lose the benefit of that view, but would revive those times 
within me, renew the old mythology, and be for the purpose and 
the nonce, a Heathen and a Catholic. By every class of the 
writings of the Greeks and Romans we may be led to intimate 
knowledge and constant acknowledgment of the Creator of the 
earth — to bow to God manifest in the world. In the mistaken 
view of the Protestant Christian, God is a being to be dreaded, 
and to be worshipped from a distance. We do not as of old see 
about us a thousand tokens of his power and goodness. Herein 
may we be well taught by even the gayest of the bards of Latium 
and Cecropia, to feel what the incarnation of the Saviour must 
assuredly have been intended to bring about — a communion and 
a fellowship with the God of the earth which we inhabit. The 
period of their existence was more favorable, to be sure, to such 
feeling. The glimmering starlight of antique knowledge shed 



318 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

over the whole face of nature a charm and a significance which 
the penetrating ray of meridian light has dazzled away forever 
— a rich effulgence on the foliage, and a silver veil about the 
mountain's brow — a faint twinkling on every brook, and over 
every valley a mysterious shadow — ' the glory and the freshness 
of a dream.' That has become science which was once devotion. 
They enshrined gods for every function and every attribute of 
deity. Their mythology was the outpouring of the piety of the 
national mind. Their Lares and Penates were so many mementos 
of a protecting providence. Their Jupiter, their Minerva, and 
their Yenus, were but avatars of the power, the wisdom and the 
love of the one, felt, but unseen, God. There was in every heart 
an altar to the unknown God, but they externally repressed 
this by these various representative deities. To reproduce this 
healthy tone of feeling among the nation is impossible ; but for 
the individual the effect may be accomplished by contemplating 
in a right spirit the effusions of the ancient muse. Often have 
I in the still solitude of my nightly musings gone back in ima- 
gination — and never without benefit — to these long-distant 
times, and felt through the feeling of another. I extend the same 
exercise to the Catholic religion ; for it was admirably adapted 
to nurse and to promote the warm, the tender, the delicious feel- 
ings of the soul. It encouraged worship to beings less awful, less 
unapproachable than the infinite and eternal mystery of ages. 
The men associated kindness and commiseration with the mother 
of Christ. Females hoped for sympathy from one of their own 
sex, and felt a calm reliance upon her who had felt the storms 
of temptation, and knew when and how best to administer aid. 
The circumstances which detach us from our connection with the 
Deity, linked them the more closely. The Protestant, when he 
is tossed on the ocean of storms, and every rising wave presses 
danger on his life, trembles at the presence of the God of the 
whole earth : the Catholic felt the arm of his patron Saint up- 
holding him, and dreaded no ill. When the face of nature is 
changed and all is hushed and quiet in the undisturbing breath 
of celestial harmony; when the bright moon is gilding the 
vault of heaven, and enlightening, calming and etherializing the 



^TAT. 20.] HEATHENISM AND CATHOLICISM. 319 

earth, the pietist now is mute in wonder at the awful stiUness of 
Ahuighty power ; and the fair laud, encircled by the arms, and 
reposing in the bosom, of the sea — bright but inanimate — ^the 
heavens and the waters holding communion in the mystic lan- 
guage of light, all seem to tell him that he is deserted, and 
alone. In times more distant, the mariner was charmed by such 
a scene ; and as he reclined in his little bark — extending with 
one hand his spotless canvas, his other upon the rudder — he 
gazed upon the silent moon, in her mild majesty presiding, and 
breathed out in accents of fervent devotion, 

Sanctissima ! purissima ! 
Dulcis virgo Maria ! 

These may have been fancies, but they were not 'fancies that our 
reason scorns ;' for whatever tends to keep alive holy and ele- 
vated love, to raise the affections and build attachments in the 
heavens, and to keep the heart open amidst the contracting cares 
of life — be it fact or fiction — should ever be welcome to the phi- 
losophic mind. All feeling is founded on fancy, and most fancy 
on falsehood." 

" Such a practice," said I, "as you allude to would require to 
be undertaken with great caution, and pursued with great mode- 
ration. Sharon Turner has spoken of 'the multiplicity of error 
which generally follows the desertion of the simple truth ;' and 
for the million that result is certain." 

"Many evils arise," said Mr. Woodward, "from applying to 
general judgments derived from particulars ; but the converse 
process occasions more. Studious and original men forfeit many 
advantages they might safely enjoy, by making universal fitness 
the test of the measures they devise for themselves, and by not 
limiting their theoretical schemes by ' the constant reference to 
convenience and practice.' What I have alluded to is certainly 
dangerous, and might be fatal, to the rectitude of a community ; 
but that is no reason why you and I may not amuse our intel- 
lects and train our feelings in the fields of fancy. The world 
and I have long since dropped the slight acquaintance which 
we ever had together. The more I look within, the more I aiu 



320 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

convinced that I am unfit for it ; the more I look without, the 
more fervently do I say within myself, ' Sit mea anima cum phi- 
losojihis/^ " 

" You arc not one of those, then, who look with favor on the 
direction which mind and mental culture are taking in our days ?" 

"The modern system of things," he replied, "neither com- 
mands my respect nor wins my sympathy. This insane craving 
after ' knowledge,' this diseased exaggeration of the value of facts, 
and this ruinous mistake of believing information to be education, 
and of scrupulously separating from public instruction the only 
essential things, the principles of religion and the rules of duty ; 
this disgusting flattery and stimulation of the mob ; this admission 
of the worthless and scorn-compelling rabble to the decision of 
questions which they can never comprehend ; this breaking of 
principles over the back of majorities ; this utter neglect of all 
that improves and elevates man, of all that is honoi'able in con- 
duct, ennobling in wisdom, important in politics, and indispen- 
sable in religion — offend alike my reason and my taste, and move 
me, I confess, to a warmer contempt than wholly consists with 
the coolness of contemplation. ' Quod magis ad nos pertinet, 
et nescire malum est agitamus,^ should be the motto of popular 
educationists. I concede fully the importance of scientific and 
mechanical kuowledge in their own place and degree ; but to 
feed with such husks a country demanding sound food, is fatal in 
its folly, and outrageous in its absurdity. It is not thus that na- 
tions are generated. There goes more than this to the making 
of a virtuous people and a wise community. A people rising to 
a sense of their responsibilities ask for light on the vital subjects 
of truth and action, and are furnished with treatises on galvanism 
and hydro-dynamics ! They ask for counsel in the distractions 
and doubts of political commotion, and are furnished with ' pa- 
triotic' lives of the hireling traitor Sydney and the selfish con- 
spirator Hampden. They are laboriously inducted into the 
regions of ' pure mathematics !' and gratefully entertained with 
' familiar accounts of Newton's Principia !' Every man is made 
capable of dyeing his own coat and assaying his pocket-pieces, 
but not a solitary step is made towards the completion of that 



^TAT. 20.] POPULAR EDUCATION. 321- 

line whereby Plato has traced with golden pencil the image of 
a pefect man, ' to know what should be done and said to God 
and man.' For my part, I admit the test of utility in every con- 
sideration ; I ask of every thing, cia" &0H0 ? And I ask it of 
Lord Brougham's efforts and publications. Do they tend to 
make us better, wiser, happier ? If they do none of these, let 
us at once tear from them the lying title of ' useful knowledge,' 
and no longer deem those benefactors of their race who amuse 
themselves by angling for popularity with saw-dust bread." 

" ^ Nee 'me solum ratio et dispulatio impuUt ut ita crederem; 
sed nohilitas etiam summorum philosophorum et auctoritas.' 
The straightest thinker among the Latin fathers has written 
wisely upon this point: 'wee tam de rebus humanis,^ says Lac- 
tantius, ' bene meretur, qui scientiam bene dicendi affert, quam 
qui jiie, atque innocenter docet vivere. Idcirco majore in gloHa 
philosophi quam oraiores fuerxmt apud Grcecos. Illi enim 
recte Vivendi doctores sunt existimati, quod est longe prcesta- 
bilius: quoniam bene dicere ad paucos pertinet, bene autem 
vivere, ad omnes ;' a sentiment of memorable truth, which John- 
son has closely copied where he says, ' Prudence and Justice are 
virtues and excellences of all times and of all places : we are per- 
petually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance ;' 
and which he may have had in his mind when he elsewhere 
wrote : ' if, instead of wandering after the meteors of philosophy, 
which fill the world with splendor for a while, and then sink and 
are forgotten, the candidates of learning fixed their eyes upon 
the permanent lustre of moral and religious truth, they would 
find a more certain direction to happiness. A little plausibility 
of discourse, and acquaintance with unnecessary speculations, 
is dearly purchased, when it excludes those Instructions which 
fortify the heart with resolution and exalt the spirit to inde- 
pendence.' What shall I say more, or what can I say better? 
But besides objecting to the sort of knowledge which they are 
now disseminating, I have little relish for the object itself under 
its best form. You and I, Sir, have, 'like all men of sense,' as 
Dr. Parr would say, our own notions of all this ' new conquering 
empire of light and reason,' and of this whole affair of popular 



322 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

instruction, and national regeneration, however we may deem it 
prudent to mask our private sentiments. I remember, however, 
a notion of Taylor, the Platonist, upon this point, which has 
often diverted me by its violence, while it has gratified me b^ 
its justness. In every class of beings in the universe, says that 
eccentric ;/rafer FlatoniccB familice, there is a first, a middle, and 
a last, in order that the progression of things may form one un- 
broken chain, originating from deity, and terminating in matter. 
In consequence of this connection, one part of the human species 
naturally coalesces, through transcendency, with beings of an 
order superior to man ; another part, through diminution, unites 
with the brutal species ; and a third part, which subsists as the 
connecting medium between the other two, possesses those pro- 
perties which characterize human nature in a manner not exceed- 
ing but exactly commensurate to the condition of humanity. The 
first of these parts, from its surpassing excellence, consists of a 
small number of mankind. That which subsists as the middle is 
numerous — but that which ranks as the last in gradation, is com- 
posed of a countless multitude. In consequence of this beautiful 
gradation, the most subordinate part of mankind are only to be 
benefitted by good rulers, laws, and customs, through which 
they become peaceable members, of the communities in which 
they live, and make a proficiency, as Maximus Tyrius observes, 
not by any accession of good, but by a diminution of evil. 
Hence, the present efforts to enlighten by education the lowest 
class of mankind, is an attempt to break the golden chain of 
beings, to disorganize society, and to render the vulgar dissa- 
tisfied with the servile situation in which God and nature in- 
tended them to be placed. In short, it is an attempt calculated 
to render life intolerable, and knowledge contemptible, to sub- 
vert all order, introduce anarchy, render superstition triumphant, 
and restore the throne of 'night primeval and of chaos old.' 
Taylor was a man too thoughtful to be disturbed by passion, 
and too independent to be warped by interest. Such a strong 
expression of opinion, though the thought be woven in the loom 
of a false philosophy, coming deliberately from such a man, 



^TAT. 20.] MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRAINING. 323 

would at least make me suspect that the inevitable benefit of 
such institutions was, after all, not quite so clear." 

"How do you account," said I, "for the fact, which seems to 
be undeniable, for it is the matter of statistical evidence, that an 
increase of crime has attended the increase of knowledge ? I 
admit, to be sure, that Bacon's maxim is both morally and physi- 
cally true, but true on the one part with entire distinction from 
the other ; and I am at a loss to conceive how physical know- 
ledge should be an engine of moral power. I can well under- 
stand that a knowledge of the comparative merits of the two 
theories of electricity is utterly valueless to the peasant at his 
plough-tail, but am unable to apprehend how it should do him 
any harm. It is at the worst merely useless." 

" I can very easily comprehend," replied Mr. Woodward, 
" how the study of such things should work aU the evil which it 
has done. Before the dissemination of cheap magazines and 
cyclopedias, the peasant, when his work was done, drew his chair 
into the chimney-corner at evening, and sat down to muse in 
quiet. In those moments of natural meditation, the drama of 
his days past slowly through his mind, and conscience gave her 
involuntary judgment. The acts of the concluded day, the enter- 
prises of the coming morrow, were instinctively marshalled in 
review, and their true worth and character were tried by the 
wisdom of calmness. In the interval memory suggested the 
wholesome cautions of the parish preacher, the long-neglected 
counsels of the anxious mother, the good resolutions which suf- 
fering had made and safety had recanted ; fancy, at her ease, re- 
vived the scenes of boyhood's reproving purity and envied peace, 
and the instructive incidents of another's fat6 and of his own 
escapes, or, wandering to a wider verge, painted in homely but 
impressive tints the sad but salutary picture of ' the hour of 
death, and the day of judgment.' Silence made gently audible 
that whispering oracle, the human heart. Ignorance left him 
'leisure to be good.' The guide and witness were kept alike 
within his breast. But now, when the fresh number of the at- 
tractive weekly presents its fascinating pages, endorsed by high 
and stimulating names, every fragment of unoccupied time is 



324 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

given to the high-wrought description and the animated criti- 
cism ; not a moment is left for self-communion and inward ex- 
amination. His quiet hours are gone from him. The inob- 
trusive visits of reflection are shut out, and scared away : he is 
too busy to thinlv, too excited to feel. In this single result of 
the absorption of leisure, and the consequent removal of one great 
barrier to sin, — ^himself — I find an ample resolution of the diffi- 
culty. You may add to it, however, the restless and discon- 
tented humor which imperfect knowledge occasions ; the rivalry 
of contempt or envy which it gives rise to ; the shade and infe- 
riority which it casts on the tame and unambitious scheme of 
duty ; and, above all, the brilliant objects with which it fills the 
fancy, as food for meditation, to the exclusion of the events and 
interests of domestic life, and the general predominance which 
it gives in the thoughts to the public distant over the private 
past." 

"It would be an interesting exei'cise," said I, "to estimate 
accurately the comparative benefits and evils which learning has 
produced in all the stages of its history. The result to nations 
seems always to have been good, but the effect on individuals 
has sometimes been woefully different. Among the heroes of 
letters are to be found some of the vilest monsters of degraded 
vice." 

" That has always struck me as a most curious circumstance. 
It is certainly true that both students and authors have, in nume- 
rous cases, exhibited an enormity of private flagitiousness to 
which the vulgar have beeu incapable of rising ; and, as respects 
the former, I can but imperfectly account for the fact. I can 
only explain the measureless depravity of such a man as Cardan 
by supposing that he was naturally a man of strong passions, and 
that his earnest and absorbing devotion to mathematical and 
other studies led him to deem the external objects of acquisition 
and reputation the only important concerns, to the neglect of 
the culture of his moral nature ; that while he thus looked abroad, 
and forgot that watchful training of the feelings which common 
men almost instinctively keep up, and even that knowledge of the 
insidiousness of the ways of temptation, which is their best op- 



iBTAT. 20.] AUTHORSHIP AS A PURSUIT. 325 

poser, his passions grew up to fiend-like magnitude and violence 
ere their master was aware of the danger. Ambitious men soon 
learn to sacrifice every thing, even soul and body, to the gain of 
a favorite end ; but ambitious men of action have a constant 
check upon their savage humors in that practised coolness which 
their schemes demand ; the poor student is left the defenceless 
quarry of the vulture-beaks of passion. That creative authors 
should be, — as they almost always have been, — men of bad dis- 
positions, and uninfluenced by the touching sentiments of which 
they have been the unabsorbing reflectors, I can more readily 
account for. An ordinary man notes his impressions to enlighten 
his experience ; and makes remorse and self-satisfaction the 
beacon and guide of his conduct. A poet observes his feelings 
only to portray them ; treasures up every twinge of conscience, 
not to reform his conduct or rectify his principles, but to point 
a couplet for the illustration of a Giaour ; he meditates on the 
twilight religion of nature's most religious hour, only to weave 
from it a white square in the chequered tissue of a Don Juan. 
A poet soon unappropriates and unrealizes his griefs and his joys, 
transporting them to that ideal region where fancy decks them 
with foreign beauty. He studies vice and virtue for their fine 
contrasts, a death-bed scene for its grouping, and a startling 
warning or an awful denuuciaiiou for its eS'ect. Others con- 
template the gladness of the morning sun, or the unworthiness of 
late repose, to emulate or avoid ; Thomson studied them that he 
might describe them. I was not surprised, therefore, to find Words- 
worth, when I met him, cold, contemptuous, and self-esteeming ; 
nor to find Southey and Landor a couple of ferocious egotists. 
In the channel of the stream there blooms no verdure ; it is the 
incumbent bank only that is vivified and refreshed. The sexton 
goes into the church only to arrange it for others." 

" The position of susceptible authors is a most unfortunate 
one," said I; "for unless they are dowered by nature with un- 
usual generosity of temper and a fund of great good sense, like 
Walter Scott, their feelings will make them unhappy, and the 
struggles of their unhappiness will make them vicious." 

" You say true," replied Mr. Woodward ; " authorship is the 
28 



326 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

most hapless trade that has yet been invented. Doubtless it is 
a noble thing when the poet's soul, expanding through futurity, 
is conscious of immortality, and can exclaim ' Nomen erit in- 
delibile nostrum.^ But there is no sort of venture in which the 
unavoidable risk is so great and the possible gain is so little ; 
even in the highest success the loss is greater than the acqui- 
sition, -and in ordinary cases the contest is against fearful odds. 
To write for one's livelihood, — to stimulate the weary and over- 
tasked mind at the call of necessity, — to execute from dull com- 
pulsion the treasured dreams and hoarded schemes of a literary 
youth, — to be obliged to think, and necessitated to imagine, — is 
a misery which, perhaps, more strongly than any other, deserves 
the name of agony. And when we look at the career of the 
most fortunate writer, and consider the trials and doubts and 
strivings which harassed his existence, and then remember how 
little of the final admiration reached him personally, — as in a 
triumph the hero who rode in the van saw but a small part of 
the crowd which followed, — we may well conclude with the re- 
flection of La Beaumelle in a letter to Yoltaire, ' La plus hril- 
lante reputation ne vaut jamais ce qit? elle coiite,^ In the case 
of a great poet, the sensibility which he pictures excites and 
wears his own ; and while physically he is surrounded with en- 
joyments, his consciousness is with his imagination, and that is 
in the scenes of suffering. When Byron threw himself into the 
situation of his Giaour, he created in himself all the miserable 
passions which he described. As a writer his success was great ; 
but surely that man's sacrifice to fame was the most awful that 
ever was made — his own heart." 

"But do you not think," said I, "that many of the evils of 
which you have spoken are shared proportionately by all men of 
letters — by the student, I mean, as well as by the author — and 
that more happiness is to be found in energy and enterprise ?" 

" In spite of the dictum of Jean Jacques, ' Uhomme n'est 
point fait pour mediter mais pour agir,^ I think," said Mr. 
Woodward, " that the miseries of a life of action are far greater 
than those of a life of reflection ; observe, I do not say authorship, 
for that has the toil of action without its rewards, and the gloom 



^TAT. 20.] MEDITATION AND ACTION. 32'7 

of meditation without its repose. Notwithstanding the extra- 
ordinary honors which fell upon Demosthenes and Cicero — 
honors, prompt, palpable, and abiding — both of them in the 
zenith of their glories recorded their deliberate regret that they 
had ever entered on the field of ambition. We are told by Mr. 
Bushell, one of Lord Bacon's servants, that when the king had 
dissolved Parliament without restoring ' that machless lord' to 
his place, this made him then to wish that the many years which 
he had spent In state policy and law study, had been wholly de- 
voted to true philosophy, 'for the one, said he, at best doth 
both comprehend man's frailty in its greatest splendor, but the 
other erabraceth the mysterious knowledge of all things created 
in the six days' work.' Many a monarch, I suspect, has felt as 
Cromwell expressed himself in one of his speeches, with tears too 
deep for insincerity ; ' I can say in the presence of God, in com- 
parison of whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the 
earth, I would have been glad to have lived under my wood-side, 
to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than have undertook such 
a government as this.' And many an amljitious statesman has 
exclaimed on his death-bed, like Amboise, the Cardinal-minister 
of Louis the Twelfth, ' Ah ! Friar John, Friar John ! Why 
was I not always Friar John 1' Let the triumph be as boundless 
as it may, it shall never fill the meanest craving of the aspiring 
heart." 

"But we must not," said I, "in viewing one side of the com- 
parison, forget the darkness of the other. Solitude and medi- 
tation encourage vast longings and bring nothing to satisfy them. 
You remember the remark of Ximenes to Ferdinand when a riot 
occurred during the king's visit to his college, ' that study and 
studious discipline were as little exempt as ambition and worldly 
affairs from the influence of passion.' " 

"Doubtless an unhappy temper will find 'some grudging, 
some complaint,' in the calmest joy and the serenest pleasure. 
And doubtless there is many a cloud overcasts the contentment 
of the scholar ; yet in all the chances of fortune and the changes 
of mood he still has ever near him the pearl of quiet — a treasure 
which Newton truly estimated when he spoke of it as 'rem 



328 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [Mtat. 20. 

proi'sus suhstantialem,- and to which I would apply what Cicero 
has said of Philosophy, ' qua nihil a Dis immortalibus uberius, 
nihil Jiorenlius, nihil proeslahilius hominmn vitce datum est.^ 
When the fancy, weary of building gilded domes of clay, and 
of picturing bright tarrying-places and inns of Mortality, floats 
away upon freshening pinions to the soul's future home, and 
calls before 'the inward eye,' that blessed .spot which we term 
heaven, the element which casts enchantment over the longed-for 
resting-place is — Peace. That is a possession so estimable that 
I can forgive the sentiment of Erasmus, in that letter wherein he 
so triumphantly vindicates his own career, that quiet error is 
better than tempestuous truth, while I cordially adopt the ex- 
clamation of the noble-hearted Barneveldt to Gomar, 'Truth 
above all things ! but Peace next.' The scholar, and only he, 
enjoys this boon on earth. To him only is given the precious 
offspring of silent thought — self-knowledge ; for the man of 
action, whose spirit is absorbed by that which is without, has 
never an opportunity to look within, and when thrown upon 
himself in the latest hour of human weakness, converses darkly 
with a strange and frowning fellow ; 

Illi mors gravis ineubat 
Qui, notus nimis omnibus, 
Ignotus moritur sibi. 

Such men make acquaintance with all things save that which 
alone shall be their companion through eternity. But to the 
man of reflection it is given to ponder calmly the sky and the 
earth and the nature of all things, and to unsphere the soul 
which abides in the universe and to commune with it, and to 
know whence and why the world arose, and whither and how it 
will pass away, and to apprehend what in it is mortal and tran- 
sitory, what divine and eternal, and to feel himself a member of 
the universe as if it were a city ; 'in hac ille magnijiceniia rerum, 
atque in hoc conspectu et cognitione naturce, Di immortales ! 
quam ipse se noscet ! quam contemnet, quam despiciet, quampro 
nihilo puiahit ea, quce volgo ducuntur amplissima P It was in 
view of an elevation of heart like this, that the Italian had graved 
upon his tomb, as a legacy of admonition to mankind. 



iSTAT. 20.] MEDITATION AND ACTION. 329 

Scis quis sim, aut potius quis fuerim, 

Ego vero te, hospes ! noscere in tenebris nequeo ; 

Sed teipsum ut noscas, rogo. Vale." 

"But is it not," said I, "botli incumbent as a duty, and wise 
as an advantage, that those who have light should show it to 
the world ? Is it not a useful and a holy work to instruct and 
reform mankind by argument and exhortation ?" 

"Sir," replied my companion, with a melancholy smile, "to 
improve mankind is hopeless. I had thought once that I might 
be a benefactor of my race in some degree and kind, liowever 
small ; but failure brought a juster knowledge. I looked for the 
results of my efforts, and lo ! there were none, save other than I 
wished upon the actor ; for while men grew no better for my 
toils, I grew worse from their unsuccess, till fretted by failure 
and contaminated by admixture, I retired from the contest to 
repair what I had lost. When with a polished blade you would 
shape blocks, the blade it is which suffers. No ! man is inca- 
pable of improvement : or, if capable, to how small a degree 
compared with perfection I Refine the understanding and im- 
prove the heart to their highest elevation of strength and purity, 
how infinitely yet does it fall short of what man must be to make 
the labor useful ! I therefore draw apart, and wait the issue of 
Almighty wisdom. When He chooses, his is the hand and his 
alone that can erect mortality. 

lu the unreasoning progress of the world 
A wiser spirit is at work for us, 
A better eye than ours. 

Labor is not always blessed, nor is idleness always unprofitable. 

God doth not need 
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best 
Boar his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stato 
Is kingly : thousands at his bidding speed. 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest: 
They also serve, who ouly stand and wait. 

Knowing then how little 1 can do for others, and how much I 
must do for myself, I say in the beautiful words of Amalthseus, 
28* 



330 FRAOhMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

Pereurrant alii sinuofis sequora velis, 

Eooque legant ardentes littore gemmas; 

Ipse, nisi attonitae mihi sit mens conscia delhse, 

Intra naturae fines regnare beatus 

Dicar, et insanis animum subducere curis ; 

and inscribe, with Bolingbroke, over my door, ^ Hie, alienos 
casus et fortunce ludum insolentem cernere suave est. Hie, 
mortem nee appetens nee timens, innocuis delieiis, doeta quiete, 
et felieis animi immotd tranquillitate fruiscar. Hie, mihi 
vivam, quod superest, aut cevi aut exilii.' " 

" And you are happy in your philosophic solitude ?" said I, 
rising to leave him. 

" I may say with Burke that ' I would not exchange it for 
what kings in their profusion can bestow.' " 

" I will leave you then in the company you love. Good 
morning." 

" Good morning," said Mr. Woodward. "Pray, Sir, come and 
see me soon again.'" 



A DIALOGUE IN TRAVELLING. 

Reflections .is to the influence which is from above, and which is perceived 
by the faculties of the soul, rather than by those of the understanding — Re- 
marks in this connection upon Coleridge, Davy, Southey, Wordsworth. 

" Each with the other pleased, we now pursued 
Our journey beneath favorable skies. 
Up through an ample vale, with higher hills 
Before us, mountains stern and desolate; 
But in the majesty of distance, now 
Set off, and to our ken appearing fair 
Of aspect, with aerial vesture clad, 
And beautified with morning's purple rays." — Wordsworth. 

It was early on a beautiful morning of the summer, that, along 
with my friends Robert Herbert and Henry Thompson, I left the 
village of Derwent-Water for a tour on foot among the beautiful 
hills and lakes of Cumberland. The gladness of the vigorous 
morning was yet upon us, as we set off, after breakfasting at a 
small inn, about four miles from the town. We had walked thus 



-Stat. 20.] REFLECTIONS UPON NATURE, 33I 

far while the earliest rays of the suu where struggling with the 
mists of the valleys ; and when we resumed our journey, the broad 
march of the majestic day had begun its full and triumphant 
course. It was one of those delicate and delightful days when 
the common air seems charged with the life and inspiration of 
eternity. 

That disposition to confound change of circumstance with suc- 
cession of time which the nature of our existence gives us, has 
led to the error of limiting the act of creation to an epoch and 
an instant. To the eye of true philosophy that mighty miracle 
is hourly repeated. If we apprehend truly the wealth of Infinity, 
it will be found that every possible system and sphere that now 
has a being must have existed before, else that anterior condition 
had not been infinite. Creation, therefore, is but revelation ; and 
daily, as the revolving sun gives glory to the shapes of earth, and 
form to the masses of the sky, the wonder at which the stars of 
the morning sang together for joy, is performed anew. Upon 
the rising face of the ancient sky, which is downed by the feather- 
ings of the light, the softness of infancy ever is abiding. Forth, 
from the bottomless abyss of darkness, day after day surges up, 
like the regular and resistless heaving of the sea, whose swell 
never hurries, and whose lapse never pauses. Thus, bathing in 
the oblivious tide of night, is the youth of the hours everlastingly 
renewed ; and nothing in nature, save the heart of man, grows 
old. The blue of the heavens pales not with age, and on the 
odor-plumed wings of the wooing breeze Time can moult no 
quill. 

Upon the first aspect of the awakened sky there is a tender- 
ness and a charm which the advancing moments soon efface. 
The varied countenance of the landscape of the skies presents 
to us at a later period characters of majesty unsurpassed, and 
serenity undisturbed ; there is always above us that which 
lights the fancy, expands the thoughts, and calms the pas- 
sions, — whether floating before the western breeze, there sail 
beneath the sun clouds freighted with glory, — or whether along 
the silence of the southern horizon there glow in dreamy 
splendor long crimson branches sprinkled with spots of pearl. 



332 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^tat. 20. 

like a child's dream of Araby the Blest : yet no variety of the 
ever 'Varying scene touches the heart with half the sympathy of 
joy, or excites the spirit with that rush of inspiration with 
which the fluttering of the primal sky kindles and melts the 
gazer's soul. Like the first glow of passion upon the face of 
beauty, it has a magic of impression which can never be re- 
newed as it can never be forgotten. 

"There is a consideration," said Herbert, as we came to a 
point on the road, surrounded on all sides by a gay and glitter- 
ing landscape, " which a divine of the George Herbert school 
might wisely moralize into a thousand similes ; I mean the ex- 
lent to which the earth must borrow from the sky to have its 
own earthly beauties fully enjoyed. When you shut out the 
clear smile of the blue heavens, you seem to exclude nothing 
upon which man is greatly dependent ; his position and his 
powers, the scene around him and the soul within him, remain 
the same ; yet, though the privation may not at once be felt, 
time will soon show that you have cast a blight upon his enjoy- 
ment which no form can resist and no philosophy compensate ; 
an influence which deadens the affections, dims the brightness of 
the virtues and even taints the vigor of the intellect ; convert- 
ing all desires and thoughts into a single want. The iris hues 
of the flower-wreathed summer — the meltingness of music — the 
grace of marbles — the grandness of tower and temple — the age 
of mountains and the strength of ocean — and all the moral lux- 
uries of kindling thought and glowing speech, and love and 
lofty rank — lose all their might, so long as his eye cannot hail 
some portion of that living color which is to him a glory and a 
soul. Where the glad and glancing sun-rays cannot pierce, 
the securest beauty droops ; and that impression which pos- 
sessed its cause as with a presence and a spirit, dies from its 
splendid magic and goes out. So are those thoughts which 
give respect to man and dignity to conduct, the airs and odors 
of an immortal world. The strong and high existence of men 
is not shut up within their mortal frames ; the bending sky is a 
portion of our life and the apprehension of deity is a part of 
our mind ; for what is the mind but a mass of thoughts ? The 



JEtat. 20.] REFLECTIONS UPON NATURE. 333 

very form and frame-work of the intellect consists of thought ; 
principles perceived make up the intelligence, and feelings 
analyzed constitute genius. This truth should be the guide of 
our schemes of education, which would then be modes of form- 
ing the mind as well as furnishing it. It suggests a notion 
which may be deemed fancy or prophecy, according to the tem- 
per of our mental disposition. If every truth which the mind 
discovers, becomes a new centre of observation from which it 
goes on to make new discoveries — a new instrument of conquest 
— a new wai'd in the intellectual key, which was wanted to un- 
lock some old difficulty — then, the mind extends by these ad- 
junctions ; it goes on transforming things which are without it 
to thoughts which are within it, and of it, and it. Thus, by 
degrees, all the external world shall be transformed into inter- 
nal convictions, and the universe of matter be wrought into the 
unit of mind, and all material existence be thought into God. 
I confess when I regard the proof the physical world gives that 
a God once existed, and the evidence the moral world shows 
that none exists now, I am indeed tempted to think that deity 
is in abeyance in his creation ; and that as the cumbrous body 
thus expires in detail, the divine spirit will revive in its com- 
pleteness. As in the dry seed lies hid the germ which holds in 
narrow bands the perfect flower which shall glad the air ; and 
in its paleness may be read by hope's prophetic eye the soft 
spreading of the roseate flush that shall make faint the heart 
with ecstasy, even so in the rude denseness of the formless 
globe is involved the life of the ever-living. Do I err in think- 
ing that mind is in its essence cognate with God ? Have they not 
the same offspring ? Are not thoughts, angels ? The ideas 
which visit and persuade the soul, are they not ministers of 
power and life ? There are thoughts which have tyrannized 
over men with a sway that no god or demon can exceed. The 
thought of immortality, for example, has crazed and enslaved 
the world ; and truly in its variety of influence is stamped with 
the seal of somewhat more than human. In times of patient an- 
guish it is a smooth river sliding softly through a forest — bright 
amid the darkness — that bears the soul gently from horrid 



334 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^tat. 20. 

tangles into quiet meadows and smooth fields of joy ; in the 
trying hour it is a poison-blast, that rides by in awful majesty, 
and while the upper sails which are yet exposed are creaking 
and trembling, the havened spirit clings nestling closely to the 
bosom of its God : sometimes it is a blind, wild terror that at 
noonday when no foe is near makes the wicked start to flee im- 
pending terror, or almost compels the mind to totter beneath 
its pressure ; and sometimes it is a whirling flame-eyed fury, 
that cracks its whip of fire and rolls its rattling wheels of 
iron." 

" Every language," said Thompson, " has marked a difi"er- 
ence between the mind and the soul ; and ' the universal lan- 
guage of mankind,' says a clear, close and strong thinker, 'is 
no fallacious evidence of truths that are founded in the reason 
and nature of things.' This difference, philosophy has not im- 
proved; for, while metaphysics has grown into a great and 
cumbrous science, none have explored the spiritual life of men 
or questioned of its origin or nature, that immortal essence 
which was before and will be after us. He who has possessed 
his soul in peace well knows that there is sphere within sphere 
of inward being, whose depths our mortal consciousness does 
never wholly apprehend or fathom ; a being, to the sense of 
comprehension, glimmering and dim, but to the faculties of 
instinct, strenuous and immortal ; seen as through the thin and 
saffron-misted da,wn, but known as with the fulness of the pulse 
of noon. Viewed by none is the form of its nature ; felt by all 
is the fact of its being. An apostle has suggested that by com- 
paring the visible with the invisible or spiritual world, import- 
ant truths might be discovered. And certainly if an organiza- 
tion so distinct as it is from both the mental and material frame 
of things be found to suggest a deity, the argument of his exist- 
ence is indefinitely strengthened. And nothing so strongly 
avows divinity ; it is indeed the type of the universe and the 
antitype of God. Of this system, he is the centre and the canopy 
• — the spring and the spreading-forth ; what it has of infinite is 
his, what it tells of eternal, comes from him. And it is this 
faculty alone in man which is capable of perceiving God ; lionco 



-aiTAT. 20.] THE MIND AND THE SOUL. 335 

when the passions of lust or vanity swell and discolor the soul, 
it no longer feels his presence, and prayer becomes a senseless 
thing. God is, indeed, the life and guardian of pur hearts, 'the 
elder brother of our spirits;' and they who banish him from 
their hearts, must toughen and petrify all the sensibilities of 
their nature. For the tender soul, exposed to struggle with the 
naked, atheistic world, quivers and shrinks, as would the un- 
covered, living flesh, blown by chilling blasts ; then, aching with 
distress, it draws within the thought of God, and that thought 
is the balm of peace and gladness of repose. When intercourse 
with worldlings has fouled and made turbulent that atmo- 
sphere of the soul, by which its breath is healthful and its vision 
clear, and made its respii'ations convulsed and difficult, sym- 
pathy with heaven is the pure zephyr that blows away the 
vapors that have clogged the scene. Truly may we say with 
the prophet in the hour of our inward trial, ' In the secret place 
of thy dwelling shalt thou hide me,' and with the apostle, 'To 
whom should we go. Lord, but to thee ?' " 

" The truths which the mind produces seem to be wrought 
out into existence by the enginery of effort ; those exhibitions 
of mysterious knowledge which the soul puts forth seem to 
be involuntary, and almost accidental. It takes no cognizance 
of the interests of the passing world, and the wisdom that 
springs from our human condition and dies with mortality, is 
no portion of its lore. But oracles of the knowledge of the 
anterior life and experience of our spirits, and of the relations 
which, in 'the being of the eternal silence,' it bears to the un- 
seen powers of the universe, are wrapt within it, as phosphoric 
light is folded in the bosom of the wave ; and casual agitation 
shakes them out. When a soul has for a season entertained 
one peculiar course of thought and feeling, and chance or 
change of humor sends in another, and the two currents meet — 
it is in that moment that great truths respecting our nature are 
discovered. By removing the barrier of worldly care and cal- 
lousness which shuts off from our consciousness the divinest 
portion of our being, our life may always sit in the unclouded 
brightness of celestial light, and memories of past eternity will 



336 FRAGME.NTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [Mtat. 20. 

be exhaled into its contemplations, while ' winged thoughts of 
the " sursum corda^' kind,' connect it with the everlasting future 
which awaits us." 

" The man," said Thompson, " of all the English thinkers, 
best fitted to investigate these strange powers of our nature 
was Coleridge. He has, indeed, done something to estimate 
their character and value, and so has Davy ; but a systematic 
display of the subject is yet wanting. Coleridge was, by his 
moral qualities, fearfully well fitted for the task. Owing to his 
long and dubious struggle with a habit which became a vice by 
the disingenuousness of his conduct in the matter, he lived for 
years in what Greville has called the ' twilight between vice and 
virtue-;' and the dark contests and fluctuating emotions of his 
spirit amid these alternations gave him capacity to behold the 
tints of sin and purity in their broadest and deepest contrast ; 
he bathed in degradation to renew the Houri delicacy of his 
appreciation of holiness, and when he relapsed to self-indulgence 
the stain stung deeper into his soul for the tenderness which 
recent absolution had produced.* His spirit writhed under the 
galling inconsistency of the lectures of an apostle combined 
with the life of an apostate, and flashed forth in its agony 
gleams of portentous light that are garnered into stars among 
his poems, and which give the reader pause, like the signs of 
a magician which we know to be spells though we cannot 
conjure with them. Davy, too, I fear, sometimes violated the 
majesty of his self-respect, and that may have given morbidness 
to a faculty which in most men is unfeeling." 

"A pregnant caution, by-the-by," said Herbert, "against 
giving credit to facts and anecdotes gathered from report, is 
furnished by the host of errata which the more recent biogra- 
phy of that distinguished philosopher has detected in the early 

* See " Recollections of Coleridge," by Cottle — the most valuable book which 
has hitherto appeared upon this subject. It is a skilful development of one 
of the most extraordinary and instructive histories ever exposed; and it is 
done kindly though firmly. Much of the tale is purely humiliating, yet is its 
conclusion proud, and touching even unto tears ; when we behold this king 
of thought freed from the demon which had convulsed his days, and at the 
close of life " sitting clothed and in his right mind." 



iETAT. 20.] COLERIDGE AND DAVY. 33*^ 

and more popular one. A few more such expositions might 
prolitablj^ teach the reading many what the thinking few are 
well convinced of, that the current class of memoirs and remi- 
niscences, whether still ductile to the imagination of narrators, 
or gathered with all their improvements into books, have in no 
case that degree of accuracy, not to say exactness, on which 
one who seeks the truth may certainly depend. In a few 
instances in which I have been able to compare versions adopted 
by society of some given incident with the literal facts, I have 
found that the statements of the nearest and most authentic 
parties gambolled absurdly from the truth. The most tenacious 
memories have a trick of substituting one circumstance for an- 
other in the histories confided to them, in a manner which leaves 
the individual wholly unconscious of the change. When a nar- 
rative has passed through two or three lips,- it is generally as 
much modified by the process as the sounds which conveyed it. 
It is a rare accomplishment to hear a story as it is told ; still 
rarer, to remember it as. it is heard ; and rarest of all, to tell it 
as it is remembered." 

"In the disputes which animate and exercise the world," said 
Thompson, "pure truth upon one side is perhaps never brought 
to oppose pure truth upon the other, but all the arguments are 
to a certain degree diluted with error. Fortunately the debase- 
ment is equal on both sides ; we fight in a cloud that dims alike 
the adversary's eye, and the muffled weapon which we bear is 
compensated by the dulness of his." 

" One circumstance," said Herbert, " in the characters of the 
men you have spoken of, gives me a higher opinion of the mind 
of Davy than of Coleridge's ; I allude to the fondness which 
Coleridge had for theory, and the contempt and dislike with 
which, especially in his later days, Davy regarded it. Theory 
is essentially unphilosophical : it fetters the mind and makes 
the errors of the past tyrannise over the inquiries of the future. 
It is of no service in the investigation of subjects and the pro- 
gress of knowledge ; it belongs to the stationary periods or 
those of decline. Youth is captivated by brilliant generalisa- 
tion ; age values truth more highly, and cares less for the 
29 



338 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

management of them. If the principles of our classification 
be erroneous or narrow, we shall certainly be led into error 
that will be serious where the matter is still in the progress of 
development. A theory based on the qualities of an object 
will prevent its being unfolded according to its objects ; and he 
who arranges topics in reference to their causes will cease to 
value them according to their results. Thus the jurisprudence 
of every nation will show, that when law becomes a science 
and a system it ceases to be justice. The errors into which a 
blind devotion to arbitrary and theoretical principles of classi- 
fication has led the common law, will be seen by observing how 
often the legislature has been obliged to come forward to restore 
the equity which its scheme had lost." 

" The English law is at present one of the most curious 
monuments in existence — an antique bulk, hewed and plastered 
and puttied into a modem shape — a fiction, retained long after 
the object of it has passed away. Yet it strikes me as a sub- 
lime proof of the wisdom and caution of that nation which has 
modified what was defective from the beginning, and has resorted 
even to the silliest appendages of fictions, rather than make a 
radical change." 

" The only portion of the constitution which Southey cannot 
muster toryism enough to admire is the law. In that matter, he 
prays for reform." 

" He is a wise man, is Southey," said Thompson ; " and a good 
man ; in fact, the greatest man of the times, though not enough 
of a quack to be popular. He and Coleridge are men of equal 
strength, and the only superiority of the latter lay in his charla- 
tanry. A clamor has been raised against him for the errors of 
his youth ; as Bembus says, ' quod puer peccavit, accusant senem.'' 
But Southey changed only as circumstances changed, perceiving 
that uniformity is not consistency. Erasmus in one of his epistles 
complains of a fate very similar to the Laureate's ; ' rapiuntur in 
diversum omnia, etiam quce optimo scribuntur animo ; ne 
tempus quidem perpenditur, quo scripsit aliquis, sed quod 
suo tempore recte scribehatur, transferent in tempus incom- 
modissimum.' The defamers of both of those great men should 



^TAT. 20.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 339 

have remembered, that, however they might have seemed to 
vary in position, they were always true to the faith of their 
principles and always obedient to the law of their natures. In 
the feelings, hopes and purposes which have presided over the 
life of Southey, there has been no turning ; though he may have 
seen, as he advanced, a better mode of accomplishing what he de- 
sired, than when he set out. It is to his praise, that from his 
earliest youth he has been the friend and defender of virtue. The 
advancement which Southey has given to literature has been 
mediate rather than direct ; it lies in what he has directed and 
encouraged others to do more than in what he has doue himself. 
' Thalaba' was a bold and defiant ' declaration of independence' 
on all the critical principles, models, and canons, whose authority, 
till then, had enslaved taste ; it was an act like that flinging of 
the spear by the converted Saxon king into the sacred enclosures 
of Druidical superstition, which desecrated forever the imputed 
holiness which was itself the false god that had enfettered men's 
minds. The dull deity of classical con-ectness was thenceforth 
unsceptred, and all were at liberty to adopt what license they 
pleased. Accordingly, it became the shield of Ajax, under cover 
of which Byron and Moore came upon the field." 

" The author, whose true character in these times it seems 
most difficult to settle," said Herbert, "is Shelley. His imagina- 
tion was inexhaustible, and his creative faculties boundlessly rich ; 
but there was in him a total want of judgment. His works are, 
therefore, not so much poems as splendid storehouses of poetical 
materials ; and to estimate the exact worth of such disordered 
wealth, has not been an easy task. Unfortunately for the speedy 
determination of his merits, his works are of a kind 

Quo neque procax vulgi penetrabit, atque longa 
Turba legentium prava facesset. 

What the mob canvass, they soon conclude ; but that which is 
debated only by the leanied, will long be doubtful. On the 
whole, I think that the reputation of Shelley has risen with time, 
and that Byron's has declined." 

" Of the latter point, in the sense in which you mean it, I am 



340 FKAUMENTAL LITERARY DlSQUISITlUXS. [^tat. 20. 

not SO sure,'- said I. " The intense personal interest which the 
peer, his position and history excited, and whicli at first might 
not be easily distinguished from the admiration of the poet, has 
indeed subsided : but if his name is less often in the newspapers, 
his merits are more freely acknowledged by the critical. He 
now stands where nobility is no recommendation. In the litera- 
ture of the past, as in the ninth place at whist, the honors are 
not courted. Byron's European fame is the best earnest of his 
immortality, for a foreign nation is a kind of contemporaneous 
posterity." 

"There is a cant," said Herbert, "of extolling Byron for his 
deep acquaintance^with life and his extensive experience of so- 
ciety. To my thinking, his misanthropy and anger against men 
denoted a want of thorough knowledge of the world and a partial 
and defective reasoning. There is a fine anecdote related by 
Goldsmith of Alexander YL, who on entering a town which he 
had captured, beheld a portion of the townsmen engaged in 
pulling down from a gibbet, a figure designed to represent him- 
self, while another part were knocking down a neighboring statue 
of one of the Orsini family with whom he was at war, in order 
to put his effigy, when taken down, in its place ; Alexander, far 
from condemning the adulation of these barefaced flatterers, 
seemed pleased at their zeal, and turning to Borgia, his son, only 
said with a smile, ' You see, my son, how small is the difference 
between a gibbet and a statue.' Scorn is the most ignorant and 
thoughtless form of disesteem ; there is a patient tolerance that 
lies beyond contempt, and a placid love, born of pity, is a yet 
profounder phase of unregard. Shelley's apathetic carelessness 
of men showed that he despised them from his heart ; and 
Wordsworth's diligent cheerfulness and systematic content, in- 
dicate a more thorough appreciation of the worthlessness of life 
than either of the others attained." 

"Byron and Shelley," said Thompson, "were friends in 
life, and have often been classed together in literature ; but they 
were in truth intellectual antipodes. The feeling on Byron's 
pages is all personal feeling ; it is actual emotion, elevated and 
refined into the ideal. His sufferings suggested all his senti- 



;Etat. 20.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 341 

ments ; and experience was the parent of all his thoughts. 
Shelley's feelings were in his imagination, and he had no person- 
ality. It is the business of poetry to present to us the generali- 
sations of ideal passions, and these are usually attained by for- 
getting or merging the individual and the real, and sending the 
mind to wander through the fabrics of fancy ; in this sense it is 
justly affirmed, that Byron succeeded by the magnitude of his 
failure. He wrote true poetry without being a poet ; he shaped 
into poetry its antagonism. The other was born a bard. Hence, 
if in respect of the mental qualities of the two men as geniuses, 
the question of greatness be made, we give the palm to Shelley ; 
if in reference to their moral abilities as performers, we name 
Byron. In the first view, Shelley possessed more of the poetical 
faculty ; in the second, it is Byron's praise, that in despite of the 
defect of those qualities, he wrote yet more splendid verses than 
the other. .The first was an intellectual superiority, the last was 
a personal triumph ; in the one you praise the mind, in the other, 
you applaud the man ; in that you extol the gorgeous fancy, in 
this you reward the victorious will." 

"Shelley's mind," said Herbert, "seemed to be no portion of 
himself; his consciousness was apart from his conceptions. It 
is this which makes him often difficult to be understood, for usu- 
ally it is through sympathy of temper that men attain to unity 
of thought. A flash of mutual feeling brightens a chain of 
notions otherwise dark and perplexing. The poet lifted by pas- 
sion to some airy seat, babbles of the golden forms which his 
fancy floats before him, and his words will be Pindaric to our 
sense, unless we are placed in the same position by similarity of 
mood. Notions are but the expanded flower and foliage from 
the germ of feeling, and we must plant the latter in our heart, 
ere the atmosphere of our intelligence will be gladdened by the 
former. In truth, we never fully comprehend a poet's lines, un- 
less we are beforehand in possession of the poet's meaning, and 
his words but remember us of our own images ; in that case, he 
is explaining our own affections to us, and giving us in ideas 
what we previously possessed in impressions. It is the business, 
therefore, of the judicious poet, by addressing the heart, to fling his 
29* 



342 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [JEtat. 20. 

feelings upon us before he expands his meaning, and thus to 
aqueduct tKe chasm between our consciousness and his thoughts. 
There is no trace of personal feeling from one end of Shelley's 
writings to the other. Compare, for illustration, his ode to the 
sky-lark with Wordsworth's on the same subject ; the one is a 
record of individual emotions and a retrospect of spiritual expe- 
rience, and breathes, throughout, the sadness of a pensive soul ; 
the other displays an artificial and mechanical ingenuity, and, as 
exquisite as a Greek chorus, is as cold as a Greek statue. It is 
this same absence of conscience and want of moral impressibility 
which makes the atheism of Shelley so thorough and undoubting. 
Byron suffered so intensely from the stings of mental remorse, 
and labored with such agony of effort to brighten the blackness 
of vice into that image of light and beauty for which his spirit 
was self-stung to struggle, that when he most earnestly chants 
the glories of sin, he is unwittingly offering his tribute to virtue. 
The convulsion of passion under which he labored was wrought 
by his striving to maintain the erectness of his spirit amid the 
tyrannizing encroachments of the devastations of wickedness." 

"On the whole," said Mr. Thompson, "Byron has done great 
service to virtue, and will be regarded through all time as having 
made in that matter a great and conclusive experiment. Before 
his time, men, dwelling in the region of moderate decency, have 
handled and smelt and tasted the forms of seductive vice, and 
have asserted that there was much excellence in them, and that 
it might be a question whether it were not a safe game wholly 
to relinquish truth and its restraints, and to take up with vice 
for vice's sake. But Byron is the first man who has devoted his 
life and powers to the cultivation of flagitiousness, and has been 
determined to find and fix in depravity all his hopes and wishes 
and rewards. To this new scheme of happiness he dedicated 
himself wholly, and with all the ardor of desperation ; he sounded 
passion to its depths, and raked the bottom of the gulf of sin ; 
he explored, with the indomitable spirit of Carathis, every 
chamber and cavern of the earthly hell of bad delights ; and the 
result was barrenness and exhaustion ; the conclusion was, that 
when the inspiring immortality of celestial hope was resigned, 



.Etat. 20.] BYKOX. 343 

there was an end to the interest wliich had once been attractive ; 
■ — that in atheism there was no principle of progression, — no 
source of vitality, — no impulse to exertion ;■ — that virtue is, in 
its views, its thoughts and its hopes, prolonged, complete, and 
permanent, — that vice is deciduous, crumbling, fragmentary ; that 
the one addresses itself to that within us which is deep and ever- 
lasting, while the other engages only those faculties which are 
mortal and transitory, and leaves the eternal loul 'to the self-tor- 
ture of irremediable vacuity.' " 

" When we observe the extraordinary difference in the whole 
system of principles, purposes and impressions between Lord 
Byron and all who have gone before him, and remember that 
every great era, whether progressive or revolutionary, has been 
preceded by some great author who, in the fulness of prophetic 
feeling has embodied all the sentiments and sources of power 
which lay at the bottom of that general effort, are we not entitled 
to conclude, that this poet is the forerunner and herald of the 
advent of some new, deep, fervid epoch which shall develop in 
action that struggling energy which his verses show, and be as 
violent, as free, and as selfish as he was ? or, if you deny the ac- 
cidental connection in time which this supposes, is it not pro- 
bable that he will create such an age ? ' Poets and philosophers 
are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.' At all events, 
whether or not we admit either a causative or a coincidental con- 
nection between poetry and politics, the sure and deep progress 
of democracy in every portion of the world seems likely to evolve 
in history a condition of which the bard's bold fire shall be the 
antitype. The radical quality which gives character to both is 
the same,. — a passionate selfishness, — a sullen savageness, assumed 
by men to make their mood the master of their life. This anti- 
cipated similarity would only be giving to the age a resemblance 
which one of its acts already exhibits. Against the centuries- 
woven frame of fetters, the tide of revolution heaved up its ful- 
ness as the last race were passing from the earth, and Napoleon 
embodied this spirit in politics and Byron in literature. In him 
were gathered all the dim and vague half thoughts of liberty and 
strength and madness which ages of every kind of oppression 



344 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

had created. His genius was the feathered mounting of the 
waters where the recurring stream conflicted with the flow. 
That agitation has subsided, but I think that another, slower, 
calmer, more general, and stronger swell is setting in, which, as 
it grows mightier in its pacific fulness, will dissolve and absorb 
what that other more impetuous surge shocked, but could not 
shake. I am not one of those who can see the dawn of a new 
era already streakiilg the eastern sky ; I do not believe this broad 
rebellion will come ' to-day nor yet to-morrow ;' but sooner or 
later it must. The democratic sentiment is one which will pre- 
vail wherever it is promulgated ; it has, in itself, a silent power 
to sap away society, as the unseen weather saps tower and castle. 
It addresses itself to the worst passions of our nature, and rouses 
all the sceptred strength that dwells in evil, while it is in these 
days sanctified by an imputed name of virtue, and thus unites 

In friendly league 
Etherial natures, and the worst of slaves ; 
Is served by rival advocates that come 
From regioni opposite as Heaven and Hell." 

"I question," said Herbert, "the permanent establishment of 
any thing like a democratic system. Antagonism is the essential 
soul of democratic strength ; opposition is the source of its might : 
when, therefore, it has conquered enmity, and that which it at- 
tacked has been dissolved to its separate elements, its virtue is 
departed ; its triumph is its traitor. As soon as it has destroyed 
control, and all is free and open, enterprise, which is the daughter 
of liberty, creates wealth and gives employment to all, and a 
conservative disposition is generated among the people. Thus 
does the condition of a state swing round through anarchy to 
peace and power. I will venture to aver, that in no republic 
will politics ever darken to democracy where the destructive 
spirit is not kept up by infusions from the dregs of those 
countries where there is something to generate it." 

"Upon that view," said Thompson, "we need not hope for 
either permanent establishments or prolonged, but a succession 
of political systems, containing in themselves the seeds of their 



JEtat. 20.] POLITICAL REFLECTIONS. 345 

own destruction and re-institution ; and that, in truth, seems to 
be the destiny of the world." 

" To rise, to shine, and to set, is the fate of every power and 
wisdom that man displays. Humanity occasionally puts forth 
extraordinary strength, illustrates great principles of action, or 
lights up great stars of knowledge, which fade and are forgotten 
with the age which they distinguish. Few temporary improve- 
ments enter into the general civility of the world ; in still fewer 
cases, are faculties advanced in one epoch, kept up in the next. 
I mean that there is no progression in the abilities of the general 
race. Perhaps, some scientific facts, and, it may be, some scientific 
powers, may be inoculated on the universal human mind, so that 
one age shall be, in its fundamental character, and in the ground- 
work and starting-point of its capacity, placed before its prede- 
cessor ; but it is ptherwise with physical skill, and with moral 
wisdom. Men are as little able to govern themselves now as they 
were in those times of deep learning, ardent piety, correct principle 
and strong sense, commonly called the dark ages. If we admit 
that one century avails itself of the wisdom of past years, and is in- 
structed by the accumulated knowledge of many eras, this age can 
have no pretension to that sort of superiority ; for it scorns, not 
studies the past, — it breaks, not builds on its foundation, — it op- 
poses, not amends its conclusions. It has assumed such a po- 
sition that it renounces all the advantage of experience, and its 
maxims are as crude and raw as those of the fii'st barbarians 
could have been. Pulling down a house is an odd way of im- 
proving it. I am the hearty advocate of reform : I repeat with 
the earnestness of a prayer the benediction of old Plowden, 
' blessed be the amending hand :' but because I wish amendment, 
I do not wish destruction." 

" Revolution is the greatest enemy of reform," said Herbert, 
" and reform is the best protection against revolution. To an- 
ticipate hostility by yielding voluntarily what will soon be ex- 
acted, is the best mode of maintaining influence. It should be 
the politician's wisdom to escape the tempest by outrunning the 
wind." 

" The cabinets of Eurone," said Thompson, "are now vitiated 



346 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

by a circumstance which weakens the politics of all refined 
ages ; the manners of the time and the taste of courts give 
pre-eminence to the subtle head rather than the strong hand, 
and the class who are thus called out are necessarily inferior in 
vigor to the more sincere and hearty races that once ruled. The 
artificial villains of this age, who elaborately form their character 
upon those of the unscrupulous diplomatists of former times, 
though they acquire a set of principles nearly resembling those 
of their prototypes, yet, owing to the process by which they 
reach the same point, they miss what is the very secret of the 
strength of the others ; their principles not being the result of 
their passions, but the debased creation of their evil wishes, 
they knowingly offend the better law which is within them, and 
so lose their self-respect, which saps the power of gaining re- 
spect from others. The great spirits whom they attempt to 
copy, while they only reproduce the empty shell of the char- 
acter they emulate, were so absorbed in their conflicts with the 
world, that they never turned their eyes in upon themselves, 
and were not wasted by the weakness of conscious villainy." 

" Strength will go farther in ruling mankind than skill. 
There is a charm in the display of power, wherever it appears, 
that makes men thankful thralls. It is this which gives such 
fascination to Byron, and will always make him, in spite of criti- 
cism and morality, the idol of the many. Nothing in literature 
equals the power with which he tore thoughts from things, and 
WTung ideas from emotion, as the chorded viol wrings melody 
from the tortured air." 

" Yet to the eye that judges of effects from causes, there is less 
power and far less courage in the strife of Byron than in the 
serenity of "Wordsworth. Byron could not rise as he did to the 
dignity of mental calmness and the majesty of mental content- 
ment. There is in Wordsworth none of the narrow sympathy 
and bigoted, enthusiasm of the school of passionists. He can 
love his own thoughts without hating those of others. He 
indulges in no straining after the impossible, — no reaching after 
the unattainable. When he has created a sentiment with the 
ardor of a poet, he determines its value with the judgment of 



iETAT. 20.] WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 34^ 

a philosopher. The temper which recognises the good that is 
in the world, is more maturely wise than that which searches 
for the evil. Compare the impressions with which Wordsworth 
and Southey have contemplated that class of persons who are 
'content to dwell in decencies forever/ and who perform all the 
outward and visible duties appointed by religion, but without 
any of the kind gushings of a human heart. You may compare 
the two. Southey's dialogue is thus : 

STRANGER. 

Was his wealth 
Stored fraudulently, — the spoil of orphans wrong'd, 
And widows who had none to plead their right? 

TOWNSMAN. 

All honest, open, honorable gains 



Fair legal interest, bonds and mortgages, 
Ships to the East and West. 



STRANGER. 

Why judge you then 
So hardly of the dead ? 

TOWNSMAN. 

For what he left 
Undone, — for sins not one of which is written 
In the Decalogue — 

STRANGER. 

Yet these 
Are reservoirs whence public charity 
Still keeps her channels full. 

TOWNSMAN. 

Now, Sir, you touch 
Upon the point. This man of half a million 
Had all these public virtues which you praise : 
But the poor man rang never at his door. 
And the old beggar at the public gate. 
Who, all the summer long, stands hat in hand. 
He knew how vain it was to lift an eye 
To that hard face. Yet he was always found 
Among your ten and twenty pound subscribers, 



348 FRAQMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

Your benefactors in the newspapers. 

His alms were money put to interest 

In the other world, — donations to keep open 

A running charity account with heaven, — 

Retaining fees against the last assizes, 

When, for the trusted talents, strict account 

Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-lawyer 

Plead his own cause as plaintiff. 

The traits of Wordsworth's description are not more similar 
than the tone of his feeling is diiferent. 

Many, I believe, there are 
Who live a life of virtuous decency. 
Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel 
No self-reproach ; who of the moral law 
Established in the land where they abide 
Are strict observers : and not negligent 
In acts of love to those with whom they dwell. 
Their kindred, and the children of their blood. 

Have we now any indignant denunciation of these as not fulfill- 
ing the whole measure of Christian charity ? No such thing 1 
— that one blames the rich for what they do not : this considers 
how much they do. ' Praise be to such, and to their slumbers 
peace 1' is the wiser ejaculation of his comprehensive mind : 
and he goes on to tell us that the poor man, the abject poor, 
does not find 

In this cold abstinence from evil deeds, 
And these inevitable charities. 
Wherewith to satisfy the human soul !" 

" No doubt," said Herbert, " the Laureate's is a younger 
wisdom than his friend's. He writes like one in whom nature 
has not done with her resentments. The other might usually 
take for his motto the lines of the kindly-souled chansonnier, 

De I'univers observant la machine, 
J'y vois du mal, et n'aime que le bien." 

" It is in the same spirit of catholic sympathy," said Mr. 
Thompson, "that in a matter of taste between the two con- 



^TAT. 20.] WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 349 

ditions, he observes a difference without disgust, and blames a 
fault without bitterness. 

The wealthy, the luxurious, by the stress 
Of business roused, or pleasure, ere their time, 
May roll in chariots, or provoke the hoofs 
Of the fleet coursers they bestride, to raise 
From earth the dust of morning, slow to rise ; 
And they, if bleat with health and hearts at ease, 
Shall lack not their enjoyment : — but how faint 
Compared with ours ! who, pacing side by side. 
Could with an eye of leisure, look on all 
That we beheld ; and lend the listening sense 
To every grateful sound of earth and air ; 
Pausing at will — our spirits braced, our thoughts 
Pleasant as roses in the thickets blown, 
And pure as dew bathing their crimson leaves." 

" The feature of mind which you have noticed," said I, "is 
certainly a quality of the highest character. In the proportion of 
the largeness of the mind is the variety of the sympathy : it was 
great in Scott, complete in Shakspeare. Few poets of this day 
may claim this praise. There is much mental intolerance and 
exclusiveness of feeling in Southey, and still more in Coleridge, 
while it overruns the writings of Shelley and Mrs. Hemans, and 
becomes disgusting in the pages of their followers. Wherever 
it exists, it indicates one who, whatever may be his faculties of 
intellect, is the subject of his feelings, — one who has not risen 
from the thraldom of his emotion, nor surveyed with discourse 
of reason the mood which he has left. In Wordsworth's treat- 
ment of the most disturbing passions of the soul, there is no 
touch of discomposure. Of the most earnest wants of sensi- 
bility, and of the most mysterious experience of the heart, he 
writes as one 

From such disorder free. 
Nor rapt, nor craving, but in settled peace. 

' It is the privilege of the ancients,' says Lessing, ' whatever be 
the subject which they treat, to enter upon it with that spirit of 
calm inquiry which preserves them steadily in the middle line 
30 



350 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

between the vice of exaggeration on the one hand, and the fault 
of coldness on the other.' No modern has attained so much of 
this moderation ; none has so much mental candor, so much 
intellectual impartiality." 

"The pervading purpose of Wordsworth," said Mr. Thomp- 
son, "is to assert the sufBcientness of the world as it is, to 
satisfy all the honest wants of a heart which acquiesces in the 
wise and the good, — to declare that the scheme of Providence 
is equally kind when it takes away as when it gives. Therefore 
the sigh of regret or the groan of despair never mingles in his 
music. Coleridge and Hemans delight to bring us by succes- 
sive descents of pictured miseiy down the road of discontent, 
till at the last they flash upon us the precipice of despair, and 
vanish ; they fling us out of their control into the abyss of 
gloom. They furnish, as it were, the reductio ad absurdum of 
repining and despondency. But in the restorative suggestions 
of Wordsworth, you see the power which curbs and brings back 
to its anterior peacefulness the tempests which its might had 
raised. The master is never carried off his feet, but when he 
has displayed his magic ends in the same self-possession he be- 
gan in. The one party resembles life's mock creator, the 
dramatist, who, when he has brought things to the last acme of 
despair and misery, lets the curtain fall, confessing his inability 
to re-arrange the fragments which he has jumbled in most ad- 
mired disorder. The other resembles the true creator, who 
can reduce men to the last depth of ruin, and bring them back 
again to peace and power, without marring the interest of the 
scene, and displays more strength in calming the agitation of 
excitement than he does in raising it. He contemplates the 
losses of life without being deprived of the wisdom of hope. 
When Coleridge compares his youth with his age, the breath 
of unchecked melancholy simply passes over his lyre, like the 
melodious sigh of a Greek anthologist, which returns mto itself, 
and is as hopeless after the utterance as before it. 

When I was young ! — ah ! woful when, 
Ah for the change 'twi.xt now and then ! 



^TAT. 20.] COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 351 

This breathing house not made with hands, 

This body that does me grievous wrong 
O'er airy cliflFs and glittering sands 

How lightly iheii, it flashed along ! 

Wordsworth in like manner speaks of the change that has 
come upon him — 

From what he was when first 
He came among the hills ; when like a roe 
He bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
Of the deep rivers and the lonely streams, 
Wherever natnre led. 

He tells US of the days in wliich the sounding cataract, 

The tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colors and their forms, were then to him 
An appetite, — a feeling and a love. 
That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, or any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye. 

As he reviews the scene, he says, 

That time is past. 
And all its aching joys are now no more. 
And all its dizzy raptures. 

Yet mark the manly judgment with which he puts by the un- 
philosophic weakness of regret, and the ingenuity of hopefulness 
with which he finds a compensation for 'what age takes away.' 

Not for this 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts 
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, 
Abundant recompense : 

and he goes on to recount the graver instruction which the 
landscape gives since he can hear 

The still, sad music of humanity. 

Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 

To chasten and subdue ; 



352 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

and can recognize 

In nature and the language of the sense. 
The anchor of his purest thoughts, the nurse. 
The guide, the guardian of his heart, and soul 
Of all his moral being. 

And his resolution ' never to submit' to vain repining, is finely- 
seen in the lines which follow these — 

Nor perchance 
If I were not thus taught, should I the more 
Suffer my genial spirits to decay : 
For thou art with me, here upon the banks 
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest friend, 
And in thy voice I catch 
The language of my former heart, and read 
My former pleasures in the shooting lights 
Of thy wild eyes. 

In another of his poems, the fourth book of ' The Excursion,' 
he declares that 

If the time must come, in which bis feet 
No more shall stray where meditation leads, 
By flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild, 

The unprison'd mind 

May yet have scope to range among her own, 
Her thoughts, her images, her high desires : 

and if 'the dear faculty of sight should fail,' he consoles him- 
self by observing that he will still be able 

To remember 
What visionary powers of eye and soul 
In youth werahis ; when stationed on the top 
Of some huge hill — expectant, be beheld 
The sun rise up, from distant climes return'd 
Darkness to chase, and sleep, and bring the day, 
His bounteous gift! or saw him toward the deep 
Sink — with a retinue of flaming clouds 
Attended. 

And, although the ' fervent raptures' of those young days of 
sensibility 'are forever flown,' 'and,' he continues. 



.Etat. '20.] COLERIDGE AND WORDSWORTH. 353 

Since their date my soul hath undergone 
Change manifold, for better or for worse : 
Yet cease I not to struggle and aspire 
Heavenward; and chide the part of me that flags, 
Through sinful choice, or dread necessity. 

Since those ' soul-animating strains' were huslied, in which Mil- 
ton bade us ' bate not a jot of heart or hope, but move right on- 
ward,' never has the moral or courageous cheerfulness been so 
nobly inculcated. Moreover, in that sublime Ode in which he 
teaches us that though our bodies live in time, our souls dwell 
ever in eternity, whose attribute for all that it contains is immor- 
tality, he indulges for a moment in a passionate regret for the 
departed light that lay 'about us in our infancy,' and then rises 
to his wonted strength of thankful satisfaction — 

joy ! That in our embers 

Is something yet doth live, 
That nature still remembers 

What was so fugitive ! 

And, having lodged among the eternal truths of his life the 
knowledge which these 'high instincts' bore about them, he ex- 
claims, 

What though the radiance which was once so bright 

Bo now forever taken from my sight; 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 

Of splendor in the grass or glory in the flower. 

He can still find abundant blessing in what is left ; 

In the primal sympathy 
Which having been must ever be ; 
In the soothing thoughts that spring 
Out of human suffering ; 
In the faith that looks through death, — 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

The appreciant patience of his thoughtful heart discerning, that 
if the ' vision splendid' of heaven-remembered glory has faded 
into common light, ' Earth fills her lap' with instructions as well 
as 'pleasures of her own,' and that 
30* 



3o4 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [iEiAT. 20. 

Another race hath been and other palms are won. 

If you will compare the last stanza of an ode of Wordsworth, 
having for its motto an extract from the ballad of Sir Patrick 
Spence, with the sixth paragraph of an ode of Coleridge, bearing 
the same motto, you will see how much more dignified and just 
and valuable than the unprofitable and false dejection of the 
more metaphysical bai'd is the temper in which the other, while 
he sees that time has ' suspended what nature gave him at his 
birth,' evokes as ministers of comfort those other faculties which 
life and the world evolve, and which are the offspring Of the 
' human \\Qa.Yi by which we live,' — 

Reason which can bring 

The timely insight that can temper fears, 
And from vicissitude remove its sting; 
And Faith . . . aspiring to that domain 
Where joys are perfect, neither r:a,x nor wane. 

The same loftiness of spirit which will not be fretted and cannot 
be ennuye, but 'makes the happiness it does not find,' is visible 
in the dignity which he gives to common things. Byron de- 
lights in nothing but the exquisite and faultless ; but surely it is 
a coarser sensibility which is only moved by some image of per- 
fection than that which can be satisfied with the small degree of 
beauty which the actual and the ordinary 4)resents. And in this 
we gain a view of that disposition and faculty which give to 
Wordsworth a loftier rank as man and moralist than any praise 
of poetry implies. Knowing that the world around us and all 
that it contains is the highest work of heaven's great King, and 
is declared by him to be good and perfect, he has seen that the 
truest excellence of grace and loveliness must be found in the 
daily realities that encompass us, and we may conceive that he 
has aimed to find in nature and in life the same satisfaction and 
approval which the incarnate eye of The Mightiest and Most 
Pure beheld in what he saw. The marks of deSp and compre- 
hensive thought that in Mr. Wordsworth's higher poems declare 
him to be a philosophic reasoner of the highest order, declare 
that in those smaller pieces, which have been called puerile or 
infantile, we must search for some profounder purpose than has 



JEtat. 20.] WORDSWORTH AND BYROX. 355 

yet appeared. Accordingly, it has appeared to me that, pro- 
ceeding on. the notion I have indicated, his object in that chiss 
of his poems has been to show what man might feel, or ought 
to feel, or what Deity intended that he should feel, rather than 
to declare that such feelings are the self-selected emotions of his 
own natural temper, — to show that in the flight of butterflies, 
the opening of a celandine, the trials of a shepherd and the walk 
of a beggar, there is enough to gratify a healthy sense of the 
beautiful, to fill the demands of a proper interest, and to move 
the sensibilities of a correct heart. And who that remembers 
that these are the scenes which the Infinite created for perfect 
and contemplates for pleasing, and of these was the discourse of 
Christ, will deny that his is the true system of taste ? — Those 
poets who only ' speak of Africa and golden joys,' and those 
moralists who feed the expectant hopes of struggling goodness 
with pictures of gorgeous splendor and exciting incidents in 
Paradise, err alike in truth of perception and in wisdom of 
policy, and encourage views that are both devious and discon- 
tented. As the faculties of man grow more exalted and purified, 
he finds higher gladness in tamer things ; and it is plain that the 
promised joy which the righteous will attain will be accomplished, 
not by elevating in degree the objects of pleasure, but by refining 
in kind the sensibilities of the observer. The punishment of 
Adam lay less in any actual change of the home of his days than 
in that blunting of his susceptibilities by sin, which made what 
once seemed paradise appear a sterile world ; and conscience is 
the sworded cherub which keeps him from the joy he once, tasted. 
Thus it seems that Mr. Wordsworth's theories are supported by 
his theology, and that we must accept his aesthetics until we can 
confute his creed." 



356 FRAGxMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 



A DIALOaUE IN TRAVELLING. 

Reflections on travelling and its modes — Scenery of the Tyrol — Power of 
applying to use the common people in difiFerent nations — Remarks on the 
letters and character of Dr. Johnson — City and country contrasted in 
their effects on imagination — Acted wisdom superior to written wisdom — Na- 
poleon a system — Prospect of liberal institutions in Europe — Vienna — 
Trieste — -The Ocean — Voyage to Cyprus — Beauty of that Island. 

" QuEe me cumque Tocant terrse.'"— Vikgil. 

As I was turning over, some time since, one of the hundred 
volumes of that eccentric but very interesting man, Sir Egerton 
Brydges, I fell in with an observation which struck me as being 
odd, but not unnatural, and which, in fact, jumped with my 
own notions so far, that I had always acted upon it a good deal, 
though I had not thought of reducing it into a regular system 
of life. He says, that if he were not held down by the tie of a 
family connection, and if his means were adequate to the ex- 
pense of the thing, he would give up altogether the plan of 
a fixed residence, and spend his days in travelling about per- 
petually, from place to place, throughout all the world ; com- 
forting himself amid the annoyances of to-day with the 
confidence that to-morrow's sun would rise over a different 
scene ; enlarging knowledge by surveying the old qualities of 
humanity under new forms of manners in the marts of the world, 
and enriching his fancy by an endless variety of the splendors 
of nature. It is the same writer that, in another work, his 
letters on the genius of Lord Byron, says, I think, justly, that 
extraordinary as were the natural parts of that great poet, he 
yet was indebted to the wandering habits of his life for much 
of that flashing grandeur of imagination, that rush of soul and 
torrent force of an unblanching mind, and the charm of a spirit 
magnificently changeful, that kindle his pages a^with the fires 
of heaven, and have made his works the worship of multitudes 
and a wonder of the times. And this notion of the learned 
Chandos has, I take it, a good footing in philosophy; for if it 
be M ell looked at, it will be found, perhaps, that those ideas which 



JEtat. 20.] TRAVELLING. SS'j 

lie upon the fancy, and those thoughts, which rise upon the 
mind, are but the images of outward things acted on, and, as it 
were, sublimated, by the analysing ardors of the moral powers. 
He, therefore, that has seen the most, has most materials for 
fancies and thoughts ; while by the same influence, if his facul- 
ties be not of so feeble a temper that they are oppressed and 
crushed down, the moral energies we spoke of, are quickened by 
the excitement of novelty, the stimulus of expectation and sur- 
prise, and the effect of fresh specimens of excellence on the emu- 
lations and ambitions of the soul. 

"A better reason," as Sterne says, than all this, — T mean a 
fondness for amusement and locomotion, — has made me pass 
much of my time in voyaging about. And, notwithstanding the 
many new inventions in this way, I think that, so far at least as 
pleasure is concerned, we have not improved much upon the 
simple method that was in use among our great-grandfathers ; 
that, I mean, of travelling on horseback. It is a characteristic 
of this age, that whatever it does it must do passionately. The 
man of the present time will not journey, unless it be furiously. 
If that grave ancestor of mine, who is now looking down upon 
me from his stately chair, with nothing ruffled about him but 
his wrists, could step out alive from the canvas and behold the 
crowded steamboat pawing madly along the water ; or the long 
train of cars shooting like a harnessed comet over the narrow 
road of iron, he would surely imagine that one side of the world 
had caught fire, and the scorched inhabitants were rushing from 
the flames — or that some still more terrible catastrophe was 
about to happen at the other end, and mankind, with a noble 
philanthropy, were hastening to prevent it — or, at least, that 
every person in the excited multitude was pressing forward on 
business of a vital importance — and he would doubtless be sur- 
prised to be told that those herds of men were hurried on by 
interest not more weighty or more elevated than those which 
occupied his own bosom, to traverse in two hours the distance, 
which to him, followed by his careful servant, had often, for the 
mind and meditative heart, formed the improving employment 
of as many days ; that one of the most tremendous powers in 



358 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^.tat. 20. 

nature had been pressed into use only that men may save a time 
which they will not employ, and shorten a distance which it 
had been pleasant to prolong. An emblem, too, of the demo- 
cratic spirit might perhaps be found in the spectacle of men 
pressing and pressed forward in masses, when before they moved 
with a more solitary and reserved independency ; in the sub- 
mission of individual inclination and humor to the direct will 
of the multitude, of which they became a part ; the exchange 
of a path and a conveyance of limited capacity for speed, with 
freedom to tarry or wander at discretion, for a road and a ve- 
hicle of limitless power, but without the ability to stop or de- 
viate at all ; with many other fancies of the like nature. * * * 
It was on a fine fresh day in the beginning of the summer of 
1828, that, along with my friend the Count de Mardini, I crossed 
the Julian Alps from Lombardy to upper Austria. A soft west 
wind was blowing, and the deep blue sky was piled with ranges 
of white pillowy clouds, which rose in unsubstantial grandeur, as 
if to mock, by their resemblance, the imputed permanence of the 
lofty hills. We had passed the summit of the ridge, and were 
beginning to descend on the other side, when a lovely little valley 
upon the left rose upon my sight. I paused for a moment to 
look upon its pure and light green grass, and to contemplate 
the beautiful repose which rested upon it. Dismounting from 
my horse, and sending my attendant forward to wait for 
me at the foot of the hill, I walked on through the valley, 
leaving the count to come along as he pleased. The valley 
terminated by an abrupt and deep descent, after a short distance, 
and the brilliant and endless landscape of Tyrol was before me. 
The distant peaks rose far above the lower clouds, and their 
white caps were scarcely distinguishable from them ; the blue 
of the sky shaded itself through the darker blue of the distant 
hills into the green of the adjacent woods, and the heavens and 
the earth together seemed one vast amphitheatre. I descended 
the mountain, and remounting my horse, continued my journey 
towards Vienna. Our way lay through the dominions of the 
duke of Swartzenburg, a prince once powerful, but whose terri- 
tories were now reduced, by the policy and arms of the emperor, 



■JFnxT. 20.] APPLICATION OF POPULAR POWER. 359 

to less than half of their former extent. Passing through the 
forest of Gratz, on the borders of the duke's possessions, the 
sound of horns occasionally heard echoing about the hills, indi- 
cated that there were huntsmen in the woods ; and I thought it 
possible that the duke himself was engaged in this pastime. 

' The duke is fond of the chase, I believe," said I to my 
companion, who had long resided in these regions, and now again 
had joined me. 

" For want of any thing better to do. But you may be sure, 
that if his highness* found it practicable to engage in any thing 
better, he would not waste his time in this barbarous and bar- 
barizing sport." 

"I should think," said I, "that as long as his dominions are 
covered by forests like these, and peopled with such savages as 
one meets with everywhere in his dominions, the duke would 
be at no loss for objects to employ his attention. There is 
nothing either in things or men which does not require improve- 
ment." 

" You say true ; every thing is to be done ; but how to do it is 
the question. A man cannot work without tools. The tools of 
a statesman are active, intelligent men ; none such are to be found, 
for the whole country is brutified. If the duke were to attempt 
to put in operation any of the many plans of improvement which 
I know he contemplates, his first and strongest opposition would 
be in his own household." 

" If a man wants tools, he can make them, or he can do with- 
out them. I know no possible condition of things, in which a 
cool head and a strong heart cannot triumph, if it wills it." 

"A prince, here," said the count, "is the slave of circum- 
stances. Immemorial custom has petrified around him, and 
shut him up in a cage of stone. His privileges are compulsory, 
his rights are duties, his powers are fetters." 

" Circumstances are rocks under which a weak man hides, and 
which a strong man scales and carves his statue on the top. If 
circumstances cannot be conquered, they may be directed. If 

* The title of an Austrian Duke corresponds to "Highness," not "Grace," 
as in England. 



360 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [JEtat. 20. 

the river cannot be stopped, it may be sent into a new channel. 
All that either the statesman or the mechanic wants, is power ; 
the operation of that power he can prescribe himself. If custom 
and circumstance have a power on people, that power may be 
used for any end. England is a country in which the art of 
managing men seems to me to be better understood than in 
any other in the world. The method there is, not to give the 
people new dispositions, but to take advantage of their old ones 
. — not to instil good principles, but to turn the bad ones to ac- 
count, — in a word, not to change the wind, but to turn the rud- 
der. The secret of success there, is to identify a cause with the 
natural interests or the prevailing passions of the people. Under 
shelter of this, adverse details may be introduced, as the fish 
swallows the hook for the sake of the bait." 

" That," said the count, " is practicable where great and steady 
passions are in action, which, having been once tried, may again 
be calculated upon. Here there is nothing to grapple with." 

" If a nation has a soul, it may be employed ; if it has none, 
one may be put into it. There is a remedy for every national 
defect. If a people are dull and apathetic, war is the' natural 
remedy. If they are servile and degraded, privileges, valuable 
on the one hand and safe on the other, will give them dignity 
and self-respect. If they are predatory in inclination, the pos- 
session of property will teach them its value. Thus for all dis- 
eases you may provide a cure. But the difficulty is, that those 
countries which want this wisdom, have not the experience which 
has taught it to others ; one possesses the knowledge, and an- 
other has occasion for its exercise. It is the part of wisdom in 
politics to make observations rather than experiments, and if 
these princes could profit by the example of older kingdoms, or 
if one imbued with the spirit, and familiar with the tactic of an 
active nation, could direct the measures of these sovereigns, the 
union would be blessed for the latter. Light is combination, and 
so is truth and power." 

Our conversations on a subsequent day turned upon subjects 
of English literature, with which the count, who had long resided 
in England, was profoundly acquainted ; and also on the politics 



^TAT. 20.] JOHNSON. 3gl 

of France, with which, as he had been an envoy for some years 
to the Court of that country, it was less surprising that he was 
entirely versed. 

"I have often amused my leisure time," said the count, "by 
reading some of the letters of Dr. Johnson, a man in whose ig- 
norances there was more wisdom, and in whose prejudices there 
was more truth, than in the learned candor of the most liberal 
philosophers of the age. Nothing, by-the-by, gives me so strong 
an impression of the robust vigor of his mind, as his hearty love 
of cities and his systematic contempt and dislike of the country. 
His fondness for the narrow and unsuggestive walls of Bolt 
Court, was a preference which was characteristic of a man who 
loved to have no thoughts within his memory that were not of 
his mind ; whose inly-working intellect preferred notions to ideas ; 
to the hawk-like temper of whose reason, conceptions were more 
germane than sentiments. The less the mind is filled with 
images of external nature, the higher and fuller beats its own 
creative energy. I think it is Cumberland who has said that he 
wrote with most facility when he had no other prospect before 
his eyes than a dead blank wall. To one who has observed how 
much influence the habitual presence of a vision or pictured scene 
has upon the strength and activity of the mind, it might not seem 
fanciful to suggest that one of the reasons why America has done 
so little that is great in literature, may be the vast extent of its 
country, whereby one wide idea occupies the mental view, — one 
great dream absorbs the mental interest. Certainly, to that cause, 
and to the consequent distraction and transportation of the 
thoughts and fancies over a great and varied scene, assisted, 
doubtless, by the great facility of communicating with different 
parts, and the constant circulation of newspapers, may be rea- 
sonably attributed the unusual want of individuality of character 
which, as a nation, marks that people ; for that intensity of soul 
which quickens the intellect into a salient fire, can only be che- 
rished by summoning all the thoughts and interests within the 
spirit, and making that which is external, subject to itself; sur- 
rounding points draw silently off that electric fire which else 
might be nursed into a consuming spirit. And the same causes 
.'^,1 



362 FRAGMENTAL LITEllARY DISQUISITIONS. [.Etat. 20. 

which give force to character, give vigor to intellect, for intel- 
lect is essentially distinctive and self-evolved ; cleverness may be 
cauglit from the imparting of the things around us, but genius is 
the raying forth of inward light. The Englishman is confined to 
a narrow walk of material images, local impressions, and political 
interests ; and I think that this tameness of the physical gives 
earnestness and power to the mind. Johnson, bred up in a 
prairie, had been far other than Johnson jammed up in an alley." 

"For the cultivation and exercise of the logical faculties," 
said I, "and for all those studies that concern the ' quic quid 
agunt homines,' that exclusion of the images furnished by the 
world of sense — ' the infinite magnificence of heaven,' ' the sleep- 
less ocean,' and 'the vernal field'- — which the city ensures, is 
doubtless favorable. Wit, too, is a thing essentialy civic. The 
queer pickings of Charles Lamb from the motley ball of humor 
could never have been prompted but by the air of the Temple. 
But that elevation of the mental and moral being, around whose 
purity plays the light of philosophy, or the yet serener brightness 
of poetry, can better be attained by inhaling those fresh and 
high-floating thoughts, which, like air, encase the shapes and 
sights of nature. The majesty of nature is the curtain of deity; 
and the light of deity is grace and truth. As poetry, which is 
the highest truth, makes its haunts in the sky-coped forest and 
the secret mountain top, so I imagine do the lesser spirits of 
wisdom, in the proportion of the purity of their essence, require 
to be manna-fed on nature's stillness. Of the men whose foot- 
steps daily wear the stones of London, there are few who would 
not gasp and stare at a stanza of Wordsworth, or even a couplet 
of Pope." 

" And yet those persons may really be the superior men," said 
the count. " The truths which the poets bring into their minds 
are incorporated in the other's nature, and are thus too deeply 
inspirited in him to be objective to his mind ; they lie so close 
within him that he does not see them. I think that the world 
errs in the high rank which it assigns to literary men. I look 
on genius as being imperfect and truncated comprehension, that 
penetrates like a point by reason of its narrowness, and of which 



.^TAT. 20.J ABSTRACT AND APPLIED WISDOM. 3g3 

the light is brilliant because the ray is broken. Poetry is but 
partial and narrow sympathy, which is interested in a particular 
because it sees not the whole. He that has never experienced a 
sentiment is the perfect poet ; even as the only pointless thing 
in nature, the circle, is the only complete one. He is the uni- 
versal and encyclopedic sympathist, for he holds all things before 
his intelligence with an equal advancement. The centre of revo- 
lution must have the rapidest motion in the system, and that is 
rest ; the roar of the coursing spheres must be the loudest in the 
universe, and that is silence. To be, is higher than to describe ; 
to do, is proof of more wisdom than to analyze the doing ; to 
have, is rarer than to explain the having. Homer, who created 
by instinct, would have been puzzled to comprehend the rules 
which Aristotle discovered in him ; yet was he the deeper critic 
and the profounder philosopher. Inthe judgmentof smallerminds, 
an angel who saw by intuition, would be dwarfed by a logician 
who proved by syllogism. Newton, who, at a glance, perceived 
the truth of Euclid's theorems, and could not well demonstrate 
them, would have passed for a dunce in a class-room. The 
world is struck by whatever is brilliant in execution and elabo- 
rate in process ; not perceiving that yisible light can exist only 
in darkness, and that enginery is always the resort of weakness. 
If we consider the matter closely, we shall find that to be wise, 
imports a loftier order of intellect than to say wise things ; that 
to act truly, denotes a superior order of mind to that which per- 
ceives truths. It is bookmen who settle the rank of bookmen ; 
hence, the supremacy given them. But, in fact, not only is 
l^ookish theory a feebler thing than practical prudence, but the 
Vt'isdom of the world of books is less in quantity than that of the 
world of action. There is more wisdom acted than compre- 
hended ; more comprehended than uttered ; more uttered than 
written. Practice is always in advance of system ; the thinking 
man is the unconscious plagiarist of the acting man. You will 
always find that the expedient of the artizau has anticipated the 
principle of the philosopher ; and if you bring down any true 
poem to a peasant, you will find that the truths which it contains 
are familiar to his consciousness, if new to his understanding. 



364 FRAGMEXTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

That philosophers and poets daily proclaim fresh truths in po- 
litical and moral science, and that the world does not act more 
wisely for all the proclamations, proves that those truths were 
previously known to the action of the world. Governments are 
framed wise by ploughmen, and proved wise by philosophers ; 
mobs make revolutions, and historians admire them. Might not 
the oft-recurring fact, that 

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, 

Among the herdsmen of the Alps have wrought 
More for mankind, at this unhappy day, 

Than all the pride of intellect and thought- 
have suggested that there is a higher way of knowing truths 
than by the analysis of the intellect, and a stronger way of prov- 
ing them than by the machinery of the syllogism ? I consider 
that the scales of fame and of true merit are inverse ; and that 
the genius which we crown with applause, is but a disordered 
and distorted form of that silent wisdom which we despise as 
dullness. Poetry is the natural mind run wild ; it is by a re- 
straint of the reason that we are not all poets. But not only 
do I hold that the hind's mute way of taking unconscious cog- 
nizance of metaphysical verities is a higher one than the pro- 
fessor's, but the order of new truths, which conduct exemplifies, 
lies above that of the notions which speculation deals with. To 
act with discretion, requires the union of so many more and more 
difficultly acquired qualities than are required to think brilliantly, 
that I regard a successful clerk or beadle as more respectable in 
an intellectual point of view than many who probe the depths 
of metaphysics, or attain to the heights of poetry. Of course 
there are moralists who can 'act and comprehend.'" 

" If, as your remark would teach," said I, " men are to be con- 
sidered truly intellectual, in proportion as they furnish no mental 
display of intellect, we should probably be right in preferring the 
thought-checking labors of urban life. The principle which your 
observation embodies, has, I confess, sometimes occurred to me, 
though I have never ventured to assert it quite so distinctly as 
you have done." 

" If we compare the two modes of life which we were speaking 



^TAT. 20.] MOKAL ANU CIVIL FKEEDOM. 3(35 

of, by their effects on masses," resumed Count Mardini, "we 
shall find that the intellectual and moral force of cities is far 
greater than that of the most populous country. To the honor 
of the former be it said, that they have always been the asylum 
of liberty. In the darkest ages of feudal tyranny, cities kept 
alive the spirit of freedom. In every contest with despotism, 
they have been the first to rebel and the last to submit." 

"Let us not mistake," said I, "for the spirit of liberty, the 
restlessness of vice or the discontent of misery. For true and 
valuable freedom — for freedom of spirit and of mind — for ele- 
vation of purpose and erectness of heart — for that independence 
which annihilates superiority by never deigning to question it- — 
I confess that I should look to the vallies and the plains of rustic 
life. A king ceases to be a superior in the country, as a caudle 
is extinguished in the sun-light ; and as compared with infinitude, 
all finites are equal, so does the boundless regality of nature 
withdraw from ranks the sting of difference. The soul is born 
free, and if there is nothing to enslave it, will remain so ; and 
what is there of slavish in the far-roaming wind, the piercing 
sun, the stream that never can be staid ? — what is there to sug- 
gest a thraldom in the calm senates of the lofty oaks, or the 
mute .hilarity of laughing roses ? 

Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina regum 
Nascuntury?ores, et eris mihi magnus Apollo." 

"That sort of moral freedom which you indicate," said the 
count, " is the only freedom that is worth possessing, and it is 
independent on the form of polity under which it is cherished, 
for it is the inalienable quality of the unshackled mind and the 
unsullied heart. But men in this world will fight for names and 
forms, neglecting the substance. With the efforts that are now 
going on to republicanise the governments of Europe, I have no 
sympathy ; for I know that they are as foolish as I think they 
are vain. The honest ai'C free everywhere ; the cowardly no- 
where. I have seen in democracies a vileness of subserviency 
that a galley slave might have pitied ; and I have found in the 
31* 



3G6 FRAGMEXTAL LITEl'.AKY DISQU ISITloXS. [Mc\t. 20. 

ranks of toryism an independence and a self-respect that Brutus 
never knew." 

"Except in the reports of journalists, and the speeches of de- 
magogues, I do not think that the ' spirit of the age' in Europe 
tends at all to republicanism. The monarchies of Europe seem 
more likely to resolve themselves into organized military des- 
potisms than to be dissolved into democracies," said I. 

" And that mode of government, as now exemplified in Aus- 
tria and Prussia," said the count, "seems to me the best that 
can possibly be contrived, for it is a government of law. If Na- 
poleon had had talent enough to combine properly the elements 
that lay around him in abundance, he could have established a 
government of this nature that would have been perfect ; he 
might have created an administration that would have combined 
perfect despotism with perfect freedom." 

" You are the first person that I ever met with, count, who 
has ventured to suggest that Napoleon had not talents for every 
thing." 

" Of all the persons of whom I have ever read or heard," 
said he, " there is no one for whose abilities as a ruler and a 
man of power, I entertain a more profound and settled con- 
tempt than for those of Napoleon Buonaparte. He was a 
great soldier, and nothing more. At no period of his varied 
life was he the master of the circumstances around him — the 
criterion of greatness — but always their absolute slave. He 
controlled not the revolution; it began without him, and its 
elements had been organized without him ; it went forward, and 
he went with it. Yast energies were in dislocated combination, 
and were to work out their jarring course ; they did it with him 
on their back ; they did it as soon, and no sooner, as certainly, 
and not more regularly than if he had not been there. France, 
under Napoleon, was like a steam-car thrown from its track, 
and dashing madly through the sand to the nearest precipice : 
as it goes on in awful force, for a while, a man stands upon it, 
and vaunts his own power which directs it ; it would have gone 
as well if a child had sat upon the box. The government of 
Napoleon contained within itself always the elements of iuevit- 



J3TAT. 2U.J NAPOLEON. gg^j 

able ruia. Eveiy mistake in policy ^vllich he could make, he 
made ; while there stood beside him a pale priest, who warned 
him from every one of them. The true history of the empire is 
this, that Buonaparte's military fame had raised him to such a 
height that he was fourteen yeai's in falling to the ground. A 
merchant may live for years in a state of bankruptcy, and still 
appear to be solvent. Napoleon's extravagant foreign enter- 
prises were the desperate movements of a dancer on a slack- 
rope, conscious that the moment of pause is the moment of fall : 
he could not have kept his place, in peace. His triumph was 
but for the half-hour necessary for his enemies to recover from 
their surprise. What a contrast between him and Cromwell 1 
who bent, conquered, and crushed circumstances, as if they had 
been osiers ; and lived, not like Napoleon, only till the unavoid- 
able explosion should take place, but lived secure in the confi- 
dence that his genius had broken down all danger and esta- 
blished his safety. Napoleon held his power at the sufferance 
of Talleyrand and Fouche, and a dozen more : they made use 
of him, not he of them ; and when it suited their interest, they 
dismissed him. Cromwell stood on his own single, all-sufficient 
strength. Compare Napoleon with Mirabeau, who, instead of 
floating like a straw upon the whirlwind, waved the tempest into 
fury with one hand, and stretching forth the other, said, ' Thus 
far shalt thou go and no farther.' In estimating the greatness 
of any one, you must judge either by the effects which he 
wrought, or by his own inherent personal might. By both 
tests Napoleon is found wanting. Cromwell transformed for 
everlasting, the condition of the English people, and the prin- 
ciples of English society; kings came in after him, but the mark 
of his five fingers is on the government to this day, and will 
never vanish. Ximenes revolutionized Spain, once and forever ; 
and the modern guerilla glories of the Peninsula attest his 
genius. These countries passed through the grip of these men 
like clay through the hands of the potter; the empire passed 
over France like a bright cloud over the earth. Where are the 
results of Napoleon's life? where, the political evidence of his 
existence ? The France of Louis Philippe is the France of 



368 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

Louis Quatorze. Read the histories of the times of the First 
and Second James in England, or of Henry and Charles in 
Spain ; and in both instances you will say, ' There has been 
some mighty spirit at work in this interval.' Read the annals 
of the last five years in France, as a history of a century back, 
and you will detect no moral anachronism. Napoleon left a 
few roads and statues ; what are these ? Proofs only of wealth ; 
any rich men might have built them. He operated on things ; 
they on men ; he wrote his name upon the ground ; they stamped 
their likeness on the nation. If, again, you look at the individual, 
Napoleon had absolutely had no personality. He was a name. No 
man can be great, who has not great passions ; lie had none. 
Richelieu left on France the furrows of every passion that ever 
lightened through his breast. The country shook as he breathed. 
Sketch his stupendous policy in the form of a portrait, and you 
have a colossal image of the man. You feel inclined to call 
France, under his administration, Richelieu ;, and to call him 
France. What all these men did, they did alone; all their great 
contemporaries opposed them. But take away from the empire 
some five or six names, and you have nothing left but the pomp 
and the glitter. Some one asked Mackintosh what de Stael 
meant when she said that ' Napoleon was not a man, but a sys- 
tem;' 'Mass! I don't know,' said Sir James. But she meant 
wisdom : she meant that there was in France a confederate 
system of power, organized by powerful men, at the head of 
which stood Napoleon, and that, by a political synecdoche, the 
world has called this system ' Napoleon.' Certainly, great things 
were done under the empire ; but Buonaparte no more did them, 
than Shakspeare's wig wi'ote Othello. The splendor of his 
military achievements has struck the world blind to his miser- 
able statesmanship ; the grandeur of his pacific monuments, 
which only showed greatness of aspiration and great command 
of physical means, has been deemed evidence of greatness of 
intellect, as the swelling robe conceals the mean form behind it. 
But the very qualities which his victories evinced, unfitted him 
for statesmanship. He fought his battles on general principles, 
and by the aid of grand and comprehensive combinations ; 



,;ETAr. 20.] NAPOLEON. 3g9 

whereas politics is essentially a science of detail — a system of 
particulars. — a rule of exceptions. When the history of France 
under Napoleon is truly written by an independent thinker, it 
will exhibit a great national triumph and a contemptible per- 
sonal failure." 

" The utter failure of both French revolutions," said I, "is a 
mournful discouragement to the hopes of the philanthropist ; 
yet with these prospects before me, I am still not without hope 
that great results may yet be accomplished in the political im- 
provement of men. The great impediment in the! way of success- 
ful change from tyranny to freedom is, that the agitation which 
necessarily attends the process constantly rouses that ambition 
which might otherwise have slumbered, and sharpens those quali- 
ties of power which might else have been ineffective. But for the 
sounds of war, Napoleon might have lived and died at Ajaccio, 
and his spirit might have slept as calmly and as darkly as now 
reposes its possessor in his wave-swept grave. Still, as in all 
cases of failure, the causes of failure are evident and were evi- 
table, there yet remains hope that, in some future voyage, the 
harbor rocks may be avoided, and the smooth river gained. 
The wreck of one vessel on a sand bar, so far from proving that 
another will share the same fate, affords a strong presumption 
that its successor will avoid it ; for the danger is made known. 
Taught by repeated failure, man may at length devise, or guided 
by accident, may discover perfect institutions, and these will 
make perfect men, and the dream of the sanguine may yet wake 
to fulfilment." 

"The perfectibility of things human," said Count Mardini, 
" is a true doctrine, but with a circumstance not always observed. 
The perfection of all things beneath the heaven wall be their 
destruction ; for destructiveness, or the disposition to impracti- 
cability, becomes in every thing mundane, after a certain point 
of improvement, an element developing itself with geometric 
acceleration, while the melioration goes on in arithmetical in- 
crease. The good in an institution, a machine, or a character, 
may now far exceed the opposing tendency to dissolution or 
unfeasibility, but the augmentive ratio of the latter so far ex- 



370 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

ceeds that of the former, that by the time that one has reached 
perfection, the other will equal it and nullify the whole. Vague 
as this assertion may seem to you, it may be proved in physical 
matters by experiment, and in moral, by figures. The atheist 
notion of the ultimate universal perfection of humanity, and the 
Christian dogma of the final dissolution of terrestriality, so far 
from contradicting one another, are consistent and identical. 
At this moment, the institutions of the liberalized sections of 
Europe are on the point of becoming perfect and impossible. 
It has happened from the beginning until now — it will happen 
from now until the end — that men and nations advance nobly 
into the illuminated temple of Reform, as if led by an an- 
gel's hand, and when their hand is just upon the altar, then, 
as if a demon's eye glared on them, they are paralyzed in an 
instant, or start back into the darkness and barbarity of thresh- 
old times. So invariably has this happened, that it cannot be 
the occasional effect of falling off, but the essential consequence 
of going on ; in fact, the pit lies at the foot of the altar. 

Jove strikes the Titans down, 
Not when they set about their mountain-piling, 
But when another rock would crown their work. 

But the splendid thinker who wrote those lines — by far the most 
splendid of our time* — errs in imagining that to be the accident 
of defeat, which, in truth, is the essential consequence of suc- 
cess." 

Entertaining the time with such conversations as these, among 
others, on different topics, we found ourselves after some days' 
travel in the capital of Austria, where my friend Mardini was 
now residing. Here I spent some weeks in the enjoyment of 
such pleasures as the society of that metropolis — one which I 
have sometimes thought was the most brilliant in Europe — could 
afford. Leaving the count, at the end of the time, in that city, I 
resumed my travels, now solitary, and directed my course towards 
the South. A week's ride brought me to Trieste. The faint 

•"Robert Browning. — En. 



iETAT. 20.] THE OCEAN. ^^i 

summer sun was declining througli the dreamy mists of the west, 
when the long, blue line of ocean burst upon my sight. My 
heart was glad within me when I beheld the glorious image of 
the infinite and eternal. ****** 

Ha ! exclaimed I, as I sprang upon the broad beach of the 
Mediterranean, and my spirit drank the splendid spectacle of 
light and life that spread before me — what a relief it is to es- 
cape from the straining littleness and wearisome affectation of 
men, to the free, majestic and inspiring sea — to listen to his 
stern, exalted voice — to watch the untrammelled swell of these 
pure waters, till the pulse of our own heart beats in sympa- 
thetic nobleness — to behold it heave? in untiring energy — chang- 
ing momently in form, changing never in impression ! What 
joy is it to be sure that here there is nothing counterfeit — noth- 
ing feigned — nothing artificial I Feeling, here, grapples with 
what will never falter ; imagination here may spread its best 
plumed wings, but will never outstrip the real. There is here 
none of that fear which never leaves the handicraft of art — 
the fear of penetrating beneath the surface of beauty. Here, 
man feels his majesty by feeling his nothingness ; for the majesty 
of man lies in his conceptions, and the conception of self-noth- 
ingness is the grandest we can have. That small and noxious 
passion-mist, which we call our soul, is driven without ; and our 
TRUE soul — the soul of the universe, which we are — enters into 
us. The spirit which rests like a vapor visibly upon the bosom 
of the waters is a presence and a pervading power ; and the 
Iireath which it exhales is life, and love, and splendid strength. 
Nothing in nature renders back to man the full and instant 
sympathy which is accorded by the mighty being who thus 
reposes mildly in the generous grandeur of his glorious power. 
We may love the forms of the trees, the colors of the sky, and 
the impressive vastness of the hills ; but we can never animate 
them with a soul of life, and persuade ourselves that they expe- 
rience the feeling which they cause. But the sea, as its coun- 
tenance shows its myriad mutations with the variety and rapidity 
of the passions which sport through the breast of man, seems 
trulv to return the emotion which is breathed towards him : and 



372 FRAGMENTAL LITERAllY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

fellowship and friendsliip — yea, and personal affection — are the 
sentiments which his gambols rouse in the spectator's heart. 
The flashing smiles that sparkle in his eye — are they not his 
happy thoughts ? — and the ripples that flit their scouring dance 
over his breast — are they not feelings of delight that agitate 
his frame ? Whether I am amid mountains, or on plains, there 
is not an hour in which my existence is not haunted by the 
remembrance of the ocean. It abides beside me like a thought 
of my mind; — it occupies my total fancy; — I ever seem to 
stand before it. And I know that whenever it shall fare so ill 
with me in the world that comfort and consolation can no longer 
be found in it, I have a paraclete beside the shelving beach who 
will give the consolation man withholds. The strong, thick 
wind which comes from it will be full of life ; the petty tumult 
of care will be shamed by the gigantic struggle of the elements, 
and subside to peace. What can be more noble or more aff"ect- 
ing than the picture of the old priest, who, wronged by the 
Grecian king — his calm age fired with passion — retires along the 
shore of the sounding sea and soothes his breast ere he invokes 
the god ? 

Thoughts like those 
Are medicin'd best by nature. 

1 have never stood by the banks of the ocean thus superbly 
fringed with curling waves, and listened to that strange, ques- 
tionable, echoed roar, without an emotion altogether superna- 
tural. That moan — that wail of the waters — which comes to 
the ear, borne on the wind in the stillness of evening, sounds 
like the far-off complaint of another world, or the groan of our 
own world's innermost spirit. Like some of the unearthly 
music of Germany, when heard for the first time, it startles a 
feeling in the secret mind which has never before been wakened 
in this world, giving us assurance of another life, and the strong- 
est proof that our soul is essentially immortal. Little as I am 
inclined by nature — and I am still less by principle — to indulge 
in hankerings after the unattainable, still I have always sought 
to realize that sentiment bv which the soul infers that its birth- 



^TAT. 20.] REFLECTIONS. 31^3 

place and home is above, by finding within itself thoughts and 
emotions which are germane only to that realm, and which 
could not take root but in a soil celestial, nor flourish unless 
watered in the bud by the undescended dews of heaven. Go, 
stand in a lonely forest at midnight, when no sound awakes the 
echo, and look up on the moon gliding over the pillowed clouds 
— go, and standing upon the topmost stone of The Coliseum, 
gaze upon the sun slowly sinking through the silent mists to his 
resting-place, the sea — or, mounting upon The Pyramids, explore 
the deep, blue sky, which hangs above you — and this feeling 
will come to you in all its fulness, and you will know its truth 
and will confess its power. Upon such scenes I have looked, 
and, looking, wept at my own incompetency to grasp in its 
completeness this mysterious instinct, and to fathom it to its 
foundation. But I have calmed my agitation and descended to 
the business of life with the hoarded assurance of deep bliss in 
store for me hereafter, when, through a long futurity in another 
world, with an eye brightened, a heart quickened, and an under- 
standing infinitely more comprehensive, I may attain unto that 
' which in this sphere has baffled me, and repose throughout 
eternity in the fruition of glorious thoughts, which here I can 
but dimly apprehend, and splendid truths which here I only 
doubtfully discern. ****** 

I found in the port of Trieste, a vessel about to sail for the 
island of Cyprus. I took passage on board of it, and on the 
following morning, the silvery waves of the Adriatic were whiten- 
ing in front of us, as sailing round cape Parna, we emerged from 
the narrow bay into the broader gulf. The crew of the vessel 
consisted of that motley sort of company which is usually found 
in the ships of the Mediterranean, — Jews of Lombardy and 
Istria on their way to the Morea and the islands of the Archi- 
pelago — Candiotes returning home from the sale of olives at 
the Austrian markets ; here was a young Turk who had been 
pursuing his medical studies in Italy, and there was a Dervish 
on his way to Khorassan. Each individual or party, according 
to their national distinctions, though strangers to one another, 
gradually withdrew from the rest, and retiring to some parti- 
32 



374 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

cular part of the vessel, maintained a haughty reserve as to the 
remainder of the passengers. The Jews were crouching in the 
dirt of the forward deck, or thrusting themselves stealthily into 
little knots of talkers with the oifer of opium and tobacco, and 
other wares, for sale : the solemn Turk was pacing the stern, with 
his long pipe in his mouth, and a shining dagger in his belt ; 
and a small party of shivering Frenchmen, with their hands in 
their pockets, and their bodies shrunk with the cold, were laugh- 
ing at a sickly dancing dog, as the miserable animal was jump- 
ing to the sound of a cracked violin. 

On the fifth day of the voyage, we touched at the island of 
Meleda, off the coast of Dalmatia ; and I trod with some inte- 
rest, the ground which later and more learned investigations 
have proved to be the scene of the shipwreck of St. Paul. 
Thence we sailed along by the wild and picturesque Ionian 
Islands — Corfu and Theaki, the famed Corcyra and Ithaca of 
the Homeric poems. We anchored for a day in the bay of 
Candia, and I landed to trace the memorials still remaining of 
that protracted defence, which, whether we regard its moral 
importance or its physical efforts, is one of the most striking 
and honorable events in modern history. 

The sun had declined into the western sea, and the mild moon- 
light was streaming far and wide through the clear, still air, 
when about midnight, the isle of Cyprus was descried from the 
rigging. I was standing alone upon the forward deck, leaning 
over the bowsprit, and watching the finely-feathered waves that 
rose like an imperial banded plume around the majestic on-step 
of the ship. Thence, raising my eyes to where the moon, in 
her mild purity presiding, smiled light and love throughout the 
adoring air, I let float through my pensive mind, those feeling 
thoughts of which the holy scene seemed redolent. Not a cloud 
interrupted the flood of light which rained through the air ; not 
a breath of wind disturbed the lone, white slumbers of the deep. 

Fair is the morn upon the monarch sea ! when the day's broad 
and burning eye flings one swift flash over the waters, and ere 
the glancing light has rested from its bounding, springs above 
the horizon and goes thundering on its course : and the waves 



^TAT. 20.] CYPRUS. 3*^5 

Wtake and tell one another the story of his coming. Fair is the 
noon upon the lusty sea ! The heart of the born king of day 
thrills wdth intense dominion, and the general pulse of nature 
feels its fullest, deepest beat : in that fervid struggle in which 
the unconqnered sea flashes back defiance, flash for flash, there lies 
the mightiest interest of power, energy and action, that the uni- 
verse can show — the manliest scene beyond the breast of man. 
Fair falls the evening o'er the sombre sea ! when nature pauses 
to consider that another breath of her life has been drawn ; for 
the day and the night are the respirations of the universe : the 
face of the waters darkens with regret that their so glorious 
rival hath succumbed, and a melancholy smile plays upon the 
brow of the lagging surge. Fair rests the night upon the placid 
sea ! fairer than all is the smile of the midnight ! It is a 
Christian calmness — a domestic quiet ! Every phase of nature 
is a manifestation of love, but through modes and sorts of infi- 
nite variety. The morning bounds with the wild ardor of the 
young man when he first meets his destined bride ; the noon is 
rich with the uudeficient gladness of the newly-married husband ; 
the evening dreams, an emblem of parted lovers ; but the lonely 
midnight watches with the affection of a pale mother over her 
sleeping child — still, though earnest — serene, but anxious — 1 
how anxious ! — If the Christian scheme be a mortal fancy, it 
must have sprung to being amid a scene like this. * * * 

When I awoke on the following morning, the gay, glad hills 
of Cyprus were around me : I was in the chosen home of beauty 
■ — the native land of love. Nature, here, is as luxuriant as 
the teeming wish — as fair as the fancy's holiest forms — as 
various as the robe of the many-vestured day. Every thing 
here is animated with swelling life. Morning rests upon the 
hills like the breath of Love upon the breast of Beauty. N'ot 
softer are the virgin odors that nestle in the folds of the opening 
rose ; not clearer is the water of the crystaling diamond, than 
the aspect and impression of that atmosphere, and the spirit 
melts into union with it. The air seems to be a feeling and 
the breezes to be vocal thoughts. The seasons, in which the 
sterner and fiercer passions of the soul find an answering voice in 



376 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS, [^tat. 20. 

Nature, are many ; when there is a concord between the selfish 
or savage tempers of the mind, and the spirit of the earth and 
skies. The bitterness of cold Misanthropy ; the jealous fires of 
Ambition ; the Gorgon severity of Hate ; Lust, and Fear, and 
Frenzy ; all these will seldom fail to find a kindred mood 
in "the great brotherhood of Ocean, Earth, and Air," whose 
responsive throb shall deepen the beating of their own wild 
pulse. It is more rarely that the softer emotions of the heart 
are either suggested or sympathized in by nature. The reason 
of it may be that the spirit of nature is always so majestical and 
strong that to cope with it we must summon within ourselves 
the sterner and grander passions ; which are usually the worser 
ones. 

But now the scene was as gentle as the first dream of Love : 
it was calm almost to religion. It was an holy day. To such 
a time belonged only 

Thoughts aa pure as the chaste Morning's breath, 
When from the Night's cold arms it creeps away. 

The yellow sunbeams, shed through the foliage that surrounded 
the casements, were casting a latticed light upon the floor of my 
chamber, and the vigorous but delicate young air of June was 
floating over my breast with a gentle rapture of joy, and glad- 
dening my senses with the inodorous perfume of its virgin freshness. 
Except the occasional chafing of the branches of the shrubbery 
in the garden, when the soft wooings of the wanton breeze waxed 
stronger than might beseem their gentleness, no sound whatever 
disturbed the stillness of the day. I lay for a while in a waking 
reverie of pleasant feelings, tasting the sweetness of the morning 
health and breathing placid joy. As the cool wind played about 
my limbs, and its mild inspiration thrilled more and more through 
my frame, the tide of life swelled with the Sowings of the foun- 
tains of the air. I arose, and, dressing myself, walked towards 
the casement to look out at the beauty of the bright-robed sum- 
mer. I was inhabiting an ancient palace on the brow of an emi- 
nence, which commanded the distant vallies and the neighboring 
sea. The grounds stretched far along the shore, and were marked 



;Etat. 20.] BEAUTY OF CYPRUS. 3Yt 

l)}' varied and enchanting beauty. The unfathomed morning, 
spreading through the air, had dappled the shadeless blue with 
its faint featherings of hazy light ; and the long and definite sha- 
dows lay upon the ground as if they had been carved for ages in 
unchanging ebony. There was a Sabbath feeling in the time, 
and almost I could persuade myself that I was standing in some 
quiet rectory in religious England. 'Fancy acting upon this 
suggestion, carried me back to ray native country, and to scenes 
which had passed away with long-past times. I seemed to stand, 
as in a dream, on the porch of my father's house, with my pa- 
rents and my sisters beside me. I drew a sofa towards the win- 
dow, and reclining upon it, indulged the memorizing dreams that 
pressed upon my heart. Upon the view before me was stamped 
the intensity of peace ; and as, with a spirit yet too tender to 
cope the interests and hopes of the active world, I sympathized 
keenly with the holiness of the scene, my soul yearned for that 
domestic affection to whose white hand the golden key of life's 
fullest and most satisfactory joy is given. It seemed to me as 
if I had left my father's house but yesterday, as if I was again a 
child, privileged to ask for boundless love, and beneath all the 
wearisome restraints of appearance and opinion. I seemed to 
have returned to that state of infantile inexperience in which the 
icorld appeared to be a visible sphere external to my knowledge. 
With what earnestness I longed to renew that happy state 
around me, as I had restored its feelings within me 1 What 
would I not have given to exchange the flickering and unsteady 
brilliance of those attachments which accident might hereafter 
promise for the tried certainties of natural affection, for that so- 
licitude which we know must wait upon consanguinity for its 
own satisfaction, — for love without passion, interest without ex- 
citement, — devotion that does not look for gratitude ! Not with 
thought, nor with study, nor with hope, but with suffering does 
wisdom dwell. Long years of sad experience must pass over us, 
ere we learn that nature is wiser than our heart, and that duty 
is a kinder monitor than hope. We must be mocked by the de- 
luding revelry of pleasure, and cheated by the false fires of un- 
stable fondness, before we can perceive that the only perfect love 
32* 



378 FRAGMENTAL LITERARY DISQUISITIONS. [^Etat. 20. 

on earth is that which glows in those eyes that have kept watch 
above oui' cradle, Alas 1 that the knowledge should come when 
the blessing has departed I 

I found in Cyprus a friend of my college life, Charles Maynard^ 
with whom in that pleasant season I had passed nearly three 
years as a class companion. Like myself, he was a lover of let- 
ters, a man of leisure, and a lover of travel : and, guided by simi- 
lar influences uo doubt, we found ourselves, by a coincidence at 
once very singular and very natural, sojourners alike beneath the 
skies of the Mediterranean, and worshiping in Cyprus at the altar 
of its beauty. We resolved to visit in company portions of 
this delightful island. That we might escape the greater heats 
which in those latitudes are sometimes oppressive, we rose at an 
early hour for our visit to the Villa Angelani, distant about a 
half day's ride. [The rest of this MS. is wanting.] 



MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 



LIFE. 



"Man," says Six' Thomas Browne, "is a noble animal I 
splendid in ashes, glorious in the grave ; solemnizing nativities 
and funerals with equal lusti-e, and not forgetting ceremonies of 
bravery in the infamy of his nature !" Thus spake one who 
mocked, while he wept, at man's estate, and gracefully tempered 
the high scofifings of philosophy with the profound compassion 
of religion. As the sun's proudest moment is his latest, and as 
the forest puts on its brightest robe to die in, so does man sum- 
mon ostentation to invest the hour of his weakness, and pride 
survives when power has departed ; and what, we may ask, does 
this instinctive contempt for the honors of the dead proclaim, 
except the utter vanity of the glories of the living ? for mean 
indeed must be the real state of man, and false the vast assump- 
tions of his life, when the poorest pageantry of a decent burial 
strikes upon the heart as a mockery of helplessness. Certain it 
is that pomp chiefly waits upon the beginning and the end of 
life ; what lies between, may either raise a sigh or wake a laugh, 
for it mostly partakes of the littleness of one and the sadness of 
the other. 

Human life is like a dream in the after-dinner sleep of a 
demon, in which an image of heaven is interrupted by a vision 
of hell ; a thought of bliss breaks off to give place to a fancy 
of horror, and the fragments of happiness and discomfort lie 
mingled together in a confusion which would be ridiculous if it 
were not awful. The monuments of man's blessedness and of 
man's wretchedness lie side l)y side ; we cannot look for the 

(379) 



380 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^Etat. 21. 

(Jne without discovering the other. The echo of joy is the moan 
of despair, and the cry of anguish is stifled in rejoicing. To 
make a monarch, there must be slaves, and that one may triumph, 
many must be weak. 

"Who is married?" said the gay and thoughtless Emma, as 
she took up that important chronicle of passing events, The 
Daily Times. " Married, on Wednesday morning, at the resi- 
dence of her father, in Wiltshire, the Honorable Lady Char- 
lotte Howard, to Captain Beauclerk, of the Royal Navy;" and 
the reader passed on. 

Six months afterwards the servant put into the same hands 
the same gazette. "Who is dead ?" said the fair querist, as she 
opened the expansive pages. " Died, on Wednesday morning, 
at the residence of her husband, in Wiltshire, the Honorable 
Lady Charlotte Beauclerk, in the 21st year of her age ;" and 
the reader passed on. 

Thus did the world notice and forget the two events : yet in 
the simple record of that marriage and that burial, there resided 
what might startle the voluptuary in the midst of his delights, 
and what the hermit might ponder in the loneliness of his cell. 
I was at the house (5f feasting and at the house of mourning. I 
saw the bride in the spring-blossom of her loveliness, and beheld 
the narrow coffin that housed her till eternity. 

The painter who searches earth and heaven for shapes of 
beauty to invest the loved Madonna of his toil, is not visited in 
his twilight musings by face more exquisite than was hers. An 
Arab, had he found her by a fountain in the desert, would have 
bowed in speechless wonder ; he would have enshrined her deli- 
cately in a crystal niche, and offered his daily worship to the 
image, and never thought of love — she was so fair. 

With the fortunes of one who was rich in all that makes life 
enviable, she was about to mingle the gentle current of her fate, 
blessing and to be blessed. Around the scene of her bridal, as 
it now rises before me, there seemed to float, as it were, an 
atmosphere of delight — a perfume of happiness shed from the 
bright object who was the marvel of the time. As she stood 
before the priest, in her father's ancestral hall, in the elegant timi- 



iETAT. 21.] LIFE. 381 

dity of patrician refinement, surrounded by tlie higli-born and 
the illustrious, fancy could not picture a, being more favored, or 
a destiny more brilliant. Her glance was a memory of joys ; her 
smiles a prophecy of bliss. Long and cloudless must be the 
summer-day that waits on a morning so splendid as this ! 

A few months afterwards I had returned from a short tour to 
the continent, and, without stopping in the metropolis, I went 
down to fulfil an engagement which I had made to visit the 
young couple in the country. I left the road a few miles from 
the house, and walked over the fields, for the day was delightful, 
and the rural scene showed full of charms. "When I reached 
the park, I met an old servant of the family, whom I had long 
remembered. "Well, John," said I, " and how is your young 
mistress ?" "I am grieved to say, sii*," said the old man, in a 
husky voice, and a tear gathering in his eye, " I am grieved to 
say, sir, that she died last night." "Died!" cried I, in utter 
amazement, almost staggering with the shock, and overcome 
with a sickness of heart which I cannot describe — " Good God ! 
can life never blunder into satisfaction ? This incessant tale 
of disappointment is a story too commonplaced to be listened to 
— too regular to be believed 1" 

It was a brief and ordinary tale of life and death ; but brief 
and common as it was, it started feelings which philosophy could 
no^ compose, and waked thoughts which religion herself but 
dubiously resolved. 

There is a moral to this history of life, which no language 
has yet been able to bring out, and which, perhaps, no mind will 
ever be capable of embracing in its fulness. All our remarks, 
though struck out of the heart by impetuous anguish, sink in 
expression to the merest commonplace. The sage explores the 
realms of thought, and the poet dives in the remotest depths 
of language, for adequate reflections, and they both come back 
to the simplest dialect of the street, as being all they can say. 
A grief falls upon us, whose magnitude, we think, might shake 
the world, and our fullest comment is a shake of the head or a 
motion of the hand. 

I stood in Windsor Castle when the coffin of the third George 



382 xMl'SCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 21. 

was borue to its vault. The longest aud the brightest reign 
recorded in any annals was concluded; all that could elevate 
and bless humanity, in the tributes of power, the oiferings of 
wealth, the esteem of the wise, and the affection of the good, 
had waited on his life ; and to dignify the closing scene, prince 
and peer, the lords of genius and the ministers of virtue were 
assembled in the imposing pomp of power and the majestic 
splendor of distinction. Yet, with all, how ordinary was that 
life and how ordinary was that character ! Focus of all the 
brightest rays that permeate the universe, he trod the common 
earth, a common man. To my thought, this history of a great 
good man, this record of power used and not abused, of 
merit always rewarded, excellence always protected, talent 
always fostered, and religion always respected, spoke a pro- 
founder commentary upon the utter vanity of life than the glar- 
ing failures of a Charles or a Boabdil. I had pondered these 
things, and was now gazing on the mockery of the funeral pa- 
geant, and knew that a knell was then sounding throughout 
England which would arrest the steps of the thoughtful, and 
melt the hearts of the feeling ; yet what could I say, what could 
I even feel, commensurate with, the demand of the scene ? 

I stood by chance at a window in London, and saw the re- 
mains of Lord Byron pass by on their way to the parish church- 
yard. He who had spurned all accepted usage, and sedulously 
scorned established habit, was borue along like the humblest 
citizen to rest in an obscure grave, like the lowest peasant of 
the fields. He whose temper had defied a nation, and whose 
genius had held high war with truth and virtue, and come from 
the contest not ingloriously, was jolting along the street like 
the carcass of a dog, aud what could man do ? 

It is recorded of both Merlin and Zoroaster, that as soon as 
they were born they burst into a fit of laughter — the quack and 
the philosopher. And in sooth the world seems to be but a 
material sneer. Of God considered purely as Creator, every act 
and motion must be creative ; I imagine that a smile awoke the 
angels from nothingness, and that man was laughed into being. 
Life seems perpetually burlesquing itself, and one-half of exist- 



iETAT. 21.] LIFE. 38^ 

ence is a running parody on the other. On the stage the farce 
succeeds the tragedy ; off, they are mingled in alternate scenes. 

To one limiting his belief within the bounds of his observa- 
tion, and "reasoning" but from what he "knows," the condi- 
tion of man presents mysteries which thought cannot explain. 
The dignity and the destiny of man seem utterly at variance. 
He turns from contemplating a monument of genius to inquire 
for the genius which produced it, and finds that while the work 
has survived, the workman has perished for ages. The meanest 
work of man outlives the noblest work of God. The sculptures 
of Phidias endure, where the dust of the artist has vanished 
from the earth. Man can immortalize all things but himself. 

But, for my own part, I cannot help thinking that our high 
estimation of ourselves is the grand error in our account. 
Surely, it is argued, a creature so ingeniously fashioned and so 
bountifully furnished, has not been created but for lofty ends. 
But cast your eye on the humblest rose of the garden, and it 
may teach a wiser lesson. There you behold contrivance and 
ornament — in every leaf the finest veins, the most delicate odor, 
and a perfume exquisite beyond imitation ; yet all this is but a 
toy — a plaything of nature ; and surely she whose resources are 
so boundless that upon the gaud of a summer day she can throw 
away such lavish wealth, steps not beyond her commonest toil 
when she forms of the dust a living man. When will man learn 
the lesson of his own insignificance ? 

Immortal man! thy blood flows freely and fully, and thou 
standest a Napoleon ; thou reclinest a Shakspeare ! it quickens 
its movement, and thou liest a parched and fretful thing, with 
thy mind furled by the phantoms of fever 1 it retards its action 
but a little, and thou crawlest a crouching, soulless mass, the 
bright world a blank, dead vision to thine eye. Yerily, man, 
thou art a glorious and godlike being ! 

Tell life's proudest tale ; what is it ? A few attempts success- 
less ; a few crushed or mouldered hopes ; much paltry fretting ; 
a little sleep, and the story is concluded ; the curtain falls — the 
farce is over. 

The world is not a place to live in, but to die in. It is a 



384 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat, 20. 

house that has but two chambers ; a lazar and a charnel — room 
only for the dying and the dead. There is not a spot on the 
broad earth on which man can plant his foot and affirm with 
confidence, " no mortal sleeps beneath !" 

Seeing then that these things are, what shall we say? Shall 
we exclaim with the gay-hearted Grecian, " Drink to-day, for 
to-morrow we are not ?" Shall we calmly float down the cur- 
rent, smiling if we can, silent when we must, lulling cares to 
sleep by the music of gentle enjoyment, and passing dream-like 
through a land of dreams ? No ! dream-like as is our life, there 
is in it one reality — our duty. Let us cling to that, and distress 
may overwhelm but cannot disturb us — may destroy but cannot 
hurt us ; the bitterness of earthly things, and the shortness of 
earthly life will cease to be evils, and begin to be blessings. 
" Eheu! fugaces, Posthume, Posthume labunturanni!^'' says the 
Roman. But there is no "Eheu!-'' to the Christian. 



A SERMON IN A GARDEN. 

" Lessons sweet of spring returning, 
Welcome to the thoughtful heart, 
May I call ye sense or warning, 

Instinct pure or heaven-taught art ?" — Keble. 

"And what are you going to do with yourself this Sunday 
afternoon?" said a fair " church-goiug belle,'' who happened to 
be passing a week in summer, at the same pleasant villa with 
myself. 

"Pardon me," said I, "I am going to church, as well as your- 
self, though not, I confess, to hear the same minister that you 
are ;" and I took my hat and walked into the garden. 

"I know not why it is," said I to myself, as I drew on my 
thread gloves, and took my way along the gravelled walk, " that 
persons should think that 'God' is only 'in his Holy Temple.' 
Doubtless his presence is vouchsafed within the walls of temples 
made with hands ; and whenever men arc ' gathered together in 



iETAT. 20.] SERMOX IN A GARDEN. 335 

his name.' And such assembling of ourselves ought not to be 
forsaken. But he may be seen in the earth, and seen in the sky, 
and all creation's forms are frost-worked with his love. The Pro- 
vidence of God, as it seemeth to me, hath in nothing been more 
bounteous than in the rich provision which hath been made for 
nurturing our moral being by the food of moral wisdom. Upon 
all the shapes of earth, and all the shows of life, there is cha- 
ractered a moral ; instruction is wrapped like a garment around 
all the state of man, and blooms like a rose upon the front of 
Nature. Each of the thousand little dramas that are daily 
rounded in the great scene of human life, folds up its grave con- 
clusion ; and Time is daily chiselling the couplets of wisdom on 
the adamant of the past, in ineffaceable events, so that experience 
hath become a great pyramid, carved all over with the hierogly- 
phics of knowledge. Wisdom, too, is the spirit of the inani- 
mate world ; instruction is lapped in the perfumes of the flowers, 
and mingles its voice with the chantings of the brooks ; it finds 
a pulpit on every hill, and makes a tent of every leaf. 

" But there is this difference between- the benefits of Nature 
and those of experience," continued I, taking a distinction where 
I had at first perceived but a resemblance. " Counsel must be 
wrung from the folds of observation, and struck from the close 
fist of History ; we must wrestle with the angel of the past, ere 
he will impart his blessing : whereas it is freely exhaled by Na- 
ture, and floats like a summer odor around the gardens of all 
creation. Mingle but among the forms of Nature, trees and 
flowers, and flowing streams, and your soul will partake of the 
purity and freshness wherewith she has invested all the subjects 
of her kingdom. For, as on the faces of the flowers, there glow 
no colors but those which they have seen in the heavens — the 
sapphire of the sky, the opal of the stars, the ruby of the 
orient clouds — so are all the thoughts which they suggest, and 
the feelings which they inspire, tinged with the sanctity of 
heavenly light. The breath of the violet's eye is peace ; the 
smile of the rose's cheek is innocence. There is great benefit 
in being conversant with pure and genial thoughts, as there is 
great bane in breathing the atmosphere of foul ones ; by com- 
33 



130 LITERARY CRITICISMS. [.Etat. 28. 

ences which he heartily condemned, and to accommodate himself 
temporarily to establishments which he constantly and avowedly 
labored to overthrow. This fine discrimination between truth 
and convenience, between permanent ends and occasional means, 
which his understanding took and his self-control maintained, 
permitted him to be politic without impairing his virtue, and to 
deal with trifles without ever lowering his dignity. Familiar 
with the homeliest and most solid parts of prudential ethics, he 
was an unapproached master in all that concerns the higher and 
more refined applications of it. His taste was wonderfully 
sound ; and his style, which commonly is the image of taste, 
though it was refined and correct, was perfectly simple, natural, 
and genuine ; and wholly free from quaintness, affectation, and 
fastidiousness. Rarely has life been looked at with a more keen 
and distinguishing eye, or the results of moral scrutiny been fixed 
in colors more brilliant and true. He knew how to reconcile 
and unite with manliness and solidity, those refinements of sen- 
timent and that delicacy of feeling, which are usually to be found 
only among the frivolous or immoral ; but which are so delight- 
ful and admirable as almost to make frivolity enjoyable and vice 
itself endurable. 

It is this thoroughly practical turn of Lord Chesterfield's cha- 
racter which has given rise to the popular opinion that he professed 
a system of loose and accommodating morals. We have read his 
correspondence, in one form or other, something like twenty 
times ; and unless the impressions of a life-long familiarity are 
at f^ult, this popular opinion is a mistaken one. But the error 
is easily explained. Men of extreme common sense, who take 
up the pen, not to breathe their fancies in an airy chase of fine 
and flimsy sentiments, but to effect some actual result of convic- 
tion or conduct — such men as Franklin, Paley, Chesterfield — 
always understate their case and their argument, as much as 
the safety of their position will admit of : they lay the line of 
their requisitions as low as possible, and give, not the highest, 
best, or strongest reason for its adoption, but the simplest, most 
direct and least questionable one : they endeavor to identify the 
principle they are contending for, with some familiar and ad- 



^TAT. 28.] LETTERS OP THE EARL OP CHESTERPIELD. I3I 

mitted truth of daily experience, and to associate the acceptance 
of it Avith some certain, palpable, material interest of the reader. 
In such cases, if we mistake for his conception of the abstract 
truth and right, what the author has put forward with a view 
only to practicability, or confound the motive which urged the 
writer with the reason which he has given to the reader, we 
make a great error. Thus Franklin, when he would persuade 
to early rising, appeals to the saving of coin that will be effected 
by using sunlight instead of lamplight : not that he was insen- 
sible to the romantic attractions of the subject, the cheering and 
exalting influences of the day-spring hour, — "the charm of early 
birds," and all the inspirations of the dawn — for his writings show 
that he was finely sensitive to all such suggestions ; but that he 
wished to rest his plea upon the lowest attainable ground, — a 
ground absolutely certain and unassailable. So it was with 
Paley : — finding that a spirit of critical and utilitarian philoso- 
phy was come up, which invalidated the logic and impeached 
the first principles of former theologians as much as it opposed 
the end whicli those principles and logic were employed to 
establish, he determined to take that enemy in the rear, and to 
occupy its own firmest and most favorite ground. He therefore 
proceeded to prove that morality is, upon the whole, a very con- 
venient thing ; that, extravagant as society is, in its general 
statement, it is quite as useful as any thing else that we set up 
in its stead ; and that the divinity of the Saviour and the inspi- 
ration of the Evangelists, absurd as they may be, cai-ry fewer 
difficulties with them, after all, than any other theory that you 
can propose. This admirably sensible and sagacious way of 
dealing with the subject has conciliated and attracted as many 
cold hearts out of the church as it has offended hot heads within 
it, and hitherto has answered the zealots only by confuting the 
infidels. Chesterfield, substantially, was of the same stamp and 
temper as these men. Take an extreme case, — the most difScult 
for our argument ia the whole of his book. He gives his son 
leave to have an intrigue with any woman of high fashion that 
he takes a fancy to ; nay, he rather advises him to it. This is 
certainly very bad indeed ; but, before we throw the book into 



388 MISCELLA^s^EOUS PIECES. [tEtat. 20. 

iu tliy safest moods some strong temptation lias come upon thee, 
and wrestled with thy spirit, and disquieted thee, and the yexa- 
tion of spirit which it wrought has made thee reckless, and thou 
hast fallen. The struggle was momentary, although bitter ; thou 
wast struck down by a blow. When thou art again assailed, re- 
member my words. Pause, and the temptation will pass from 
thee ; be still for a moment, and that stillness will be thy salva- 
tion ! 

" The sin which assaults thee, seems to thee sweet, and thou 
thiukest that it will be always so, that to vanish it were hard, to 
live without it were a dreary prospect. But pause, and thy mood 
will change ; thy appetites are corrupted by the proximity of 
evil thought ; let it slip from thy mind, and the craving for it 
will fall with it. It is only in their first rankness, in their pant- 
ing novelty, that sins have a force to paralyze the will and melt 
down the moral purpose ; if thou canst make them wait two 
breathings at the door, they will fade and fall to earth. The 
first moment of attack is not the moment to put forth thy 
strength ; thy vigor is then racked by the keenness of temptation : 
but pause, and by that recuperation of vigor in repose, which is 
a law of both the physical and the moral life, thy energy will be 
augmented and concentered, and with one sally thou wilt dis- 
perse the foe. 

" The contemplation of flowers opens to us other ends and ob- 
jects of existence, than those that lie in the open view and 
worldly recognition of mankind, and teach the great lesson 
of contentment. In many a lonely vale and many a hidden nook, 
there flowers and fades a gem, whose beauty has drawn forth the 
choicest wealth of heaven, and which, to mortal seeming, was 
only framed to lie along the breast of love, or nod above the 
regal brow of beauty ; yet where it waved, it wanes ; no mortal 
eye hath ever sparkled o'er its splendor, and on earth no record 
lives of its exceeding fairness. Yet not in vain did it pass 
through the silent mystery of birth, nor can its placid smile be 
saddened by reproach of uselessness : such marvellous skill the 
All-wise would never waste, and if he formed, he first had fixed 
a purpose ; yet in the world's valuables that flower had 



^TAT. 20.] SERMON IN A GARDEN. 389 

uninventoried. Hence, stranger, if the world shower her pearl 
and gold wide of thy dreary path, and if the voice of praise or 
sympathy come never nigh thee, nor conscious proof of usefulness 
console thy life, and thou thinkest that thy being is divorced from 
purpose, yet be not disquieted : fret not thy gentle fancy with 
such thought : thy breathing has its benefit. The lonely flower 
is telling thee that God is pleased with that which, in its ap- 
pointed place, but buds, and blooms and dies ; it lives to show 
thee, that while the whirlwind executeth wrath, and the breeze 
conveyeth mercy, those 'also serve, who only stand and wait.' 
Possess thy soul in peace ; ripple not the current of thy years 
by pining or regret, for he that fashioned thee in secret, 'curiously 
wrought thee in continuance,' sees a use in thy existence. 

'Tis Nature's law that nothing shall exist 
Divorced from good — a spirit and a pulse of good. 
A life and soul to every mode of being 
Inseparably linked ! 

"The white feet of the moonlight gliding on the lonely Ararat 
— the music of the wind that sighs among the ice-cliffs of Arctic 
desolations — the desert spring that hath never moistened a 
mortal lip — all, all are useful in their great Creator's eye. In 
the orchestral harmony of being, they make up the full-chan- 
nelled stream of praise ; — they swell the columned incense that 
daily voyages from earth to heaven ; they are a feature in the 
world-mirrored face of God. So, the contentment that sits and 
sings by its own grey hearth, and the armless, voiceless resigna- 
tion, that rolls its coat of frieze about its limbs and smiles — they 
'bear His mild yoke,' and bearing it, are blessed. Thou who 
sighest in obscurity, repress these rising murmurs ; sweeten the 
air with calm submission ; and let the watery beams of Hope 
silver the stainless element of Peace. 

"From the enfeebling and pernicious distractions of externality 
we may in some measure be delivered by the soothing gentleness 
of thoughts a-field, and taught a quiet inwardness of feeling. 
An anxious and busy conscience, finding that it has a work to 
do, looks out for earnest action, forgetting that the best ' good 
work' it can perform is to preserve its own garment white, and 
33* 



390 MISCELLANEUUS PIECES. [^i'AT. 20. 

to keep its vestments unspotted from the world — to calm down 
its own passions — to keep its own will resigned. I abhor and 
deprecate that restless rage of action, that incessant enterprise, 
that is abroad in the Christian world — that outwardness of 
interest, which never inquires if all is well about the heart ; it is 
the opposite of 'pure and undefiled religion;' it begins in folly 
and a feeble judgment, and it ends in vanity, presumption, and 
self-righteousness. It forgets those high and solemn duties 
which every man owes to that immortal being — ^his own soul. 
Doth not the prophet rebuke this pious fi*enzy when he saith, — • 
' Thy strength is to sit still ?' And doth not the apostle disclaim 
these works when he saith — ' The fruit of the spirit is peace ?' 
O, that the Christian 

AVoulJ pause awhile from action, to be wise ! 

" Nothing can better display to us the true value of our own 
state and nature than the thought of that world which is walled 
within a garden. When from the heated interests of life, its 
breathless anxieties, its leaden cares, we turn to this white-robed 
commonwealth of flowers, and behold how large a sphere there 
is, on the threshold of which all the concerns which we have 
weighed, sink into naught, the burthen of those cares is lightened, 
the sting of those anxieties is drawn. When we see how large 
a share of the love and the power of God, is hourly shed upon 
objects from which man is shut out, we see how small a space 
life fills in the broad eye that scans the universe. 

" The hourly fading of the brightest flowers shows us how 
valueless is their existence, and may teach us hoAv small is the 
claim our merit gives us. Viewing all things from ourselves as 
a centre, we seem to occupy the foremost ground and highest 
platform of ci'eation, and think that the arm of vengeance will 
be arrested from regard to our eminence, or, in truth, to our 
native excellence. Turn, thou that measurest with the high and 
lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, and that thiukest thyself of 
consequence to him, turn to the lessons of the withered lily — the 
wisdom of the drooping rose. Sparkling beneath the morning 
sun, behold a city of delights where an angel might refresh his 



^TAT. 20.] SERMON IX A GARDEN. 39I 

spirits, and a seraph make glad his inmost heart ; where skill is 
lavished in unceasing fulness, and the music-breath of beauty floats 
like a vapor round the forms of grace. If earthly thing, unaided, 
could win his love or gain a title to his sparing mercy, it were 
surely this — the only mundane thing that never sinned. But in 
the noontide gladness of their rarest grace — in the summer 
sweetness of their most enchanting loveliness — in a moment he 
blots out their being, and turns their beauty to darkness and 
decay. Let us learn then that if God hath no need of ' his own 
gifts,' neither hath he of 'man's work.' Between them and us 
it is but a difference of days and years. 

" While thus their present splendor bids us uncrest our pride, 
and plant the knee where stood the foot, so will their sometime 
meanness counsel us to caution how we use contempt. We daily 
meet with those in whom the inner and diviner life of man is no 
more developed than is the eyelet in the stone-dry bulb, or the 
yet uugreened bud upon the bush. Yet, reverence mortality 
wherever it moves, and let the foot of scorn come never near to 
hurt the meanest of the manly race. For as that bulb and bush, 
stone-dry, ungreened, e'en now fold up unseen within their 
rudeness the perfect flower which shall deck the air, so in the 
darkest, rudest breast, there lurks a soul — a thing, even now, 
God-like and awful, but which, anon, will gem the long line of 
Christ's attendant train. The cold and clod-like savages that 
chill the earth — tliey are but angels in the wintry state. He 
that regrets a leafless plant may be scorning that which shall 
win him love from them he loves ; he that had struck the goatherd 
of Admetus, had smitten the sun-god. As, then, the time-for- 
getting seedsman smells the orient blossom in the death-browned 
wood, and as in cottaged humbleness the prophetic eye of ma- 
ternal love vails to the sceptre in her infant's grasp, so let the 
heart of faith respect a seraph in each mortal form. Contempt 
is a feeling that is rarely just, and never wise : however degraded 
an object may be, until thou hast thoroughly known all its his- 
tory, and hast clearly seen its destiny, thou hast no right, as an 
honest man, to despise, and none then, as a philosopher. What 
thou wouldst scorn, has its place in some system : and he that 



392 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 21. 

understands the elevation of the statue, will never sneer at the 
lowliness of the pedestal. 

" Such," I continued to myself, drawing up my feet as I felt 
the ground growing damp under my limbs, " into such, and a 
thousand other hints of virtue, might this scene be moralized. 
But there is in the mere atmosphere, that floats around these 
gentle urns of loveliness, a draught of virtuous power, for that 
atmosphere is a mild sadness. 

" ' There is often found,' says the sweet prophet of the moral 
muse, my master Wordsworth — 

' There is often found 
In mournful thoughts, and always might be found, 
A power, to virtue friendly.' 

" All joy and complacency tends to unnerve and enfeeble the 
spirit, and all saddening thoughts are wholesome, and have airs 
of virtue breathing about them. And when gay scenes pass 
before the eyes, and the heart is not interested, there is always 
raised a feeling of regret. In the gladness of beauty, the aged 
heart's second sight discerns a something mournful, and the 
brightest pageant, when the hopes are elsewhere, is a melancholy 
thing. The mere ambition of the scene excites these pensive 
thoughts, and when we add to the feeling with which we look 
on flowers, the remembrance of their evanescence, the conside- 
ration is full-fraught with that sorrow which leadeth to wisdom. 
As they fade momently, beneath our eyes, let the young and the 
lovely remember, that if one beauty decks their front, one des- 
tiny binds their lives." 



RELIGION AND POETRY, 



The one essential characteristic of the material man is life, 
and the one essential characteristic of the moral man is religion. 
As in the physical system there are two sources of vitality — the 
heart and the brain,. — so in the spiritual system there are two 



JEtat. 21.] RELIGION AND POETRY. 393 

sources of piety — the intellect and tlie feelings. As in the 
former both must exist, so in the latter. As in the one both 
must be distinct, so also in the other. 

During one of the most oppressive summers which I ever 
remember to have felt in Persia, I left Bacdat, which was then 
my residence, to cestuate in the delicious village of Soora, a 
place which may or may not be on the maps, about five hours 
north of the city. Whatever part the love-crowning roses and 
the " rosy-crowned loves" of the place might have had in carry- 
ing me there, the pleasure of enjoying the society of decidedly the 
most intelligent man I ever met with, constituted a large share 
of the inducement. Our cottages were in two vallies, on the op- 
posite sides of a respectable hill, and as to accomplish the passage 
in the middle of the day was a thing impossible, we paid each 
other alternate visits every morning, measuring them as the 
pendulum of the world oscillates, — by the day. One morning, 
as I walked down his side of the hill, I saw him sitting by a 
fountain before his door: "Mirkaun !" cried I, "what is your 
opinion of the origin of evil ?" 

" Separation," answered he, and he monologized till sunset in 
proof of his position that all moral errors arose from the sepa- 
ration of things which ought to be united. 

The next day when he called on me, he said, as soon as he 
came within speaking distance, " H., what is your opinion of 
the origin of evil ?" 

"Union," anff\^^ered I ; and I employed the day in demon- 
strating that all error was occasioned by the union of principles 
Avhich ought to be kept separate. 

I am surprised, by the by, that those who have sought for the 
first germ and cause of evil in the universe, have not rather 
looked for it in the confusion, division, or misapplication of 
good, than attempted to refer it to a distinct and independent 
principle. I may add, that when I met my companion on the 
following morning, he asked me what opinion I held of the 
merits of the two days' discussion. I replied that either was a 
good theory as theories went, but that the truth would probably 
be found in both joined together. 



394 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 21. 

" True," replied he, " and that proves my position." 
I have wandered from my purpose, which was to remark that 
the true cause of the final corruption of every pure religion, and 
the original fault of every impure creed, has been joining with 
the divine and systematic portions of the belief matters which, 
though a part of the whole scheme of religion, were yet no part 
of the assured creed, being, in fact, implied results from it, or 
collateral connections with it, rather than definite elements of 
the original principle. I have no intention to develop this idea 
in all its applications ; that belongs to a work which yet remains 
to be written by some independent thinker, and which, when 
written, will be the most valuable addition to human knowledge 
which it has received since the time of Bacon — " The History of 
Religion." I am only wishing to indicate the effect on the 
pagan and Roman Catholic religions, of incorporating feeling 
with conviction, and the propriety of keeping them asunder in 
the modern Protestant systems. In Greece, religion was the 
natural offspring of feeling ; in the elder Christian world, feel- 
ing was the adopted issue of religion ; the two matters are now 
separate systems, for the most part, and should be so entirely. 

The delicate Grecian, placed by nature in the land of beauty's 
chosen seat, amid all tender and impressive influences, felt as the 
child of nature needs must feel when every breeze that blew 
was instinct with delight. There is in all sentiment something 
sacred ; and the Greek, following the mild impulse of natural 
inclination, deified the whole system of his feelings, and the 
wondrous mythology of his country was created. Of a reli- 
gion thus fashioned, many were the advantages. The earth was 
a consecrated pantheon ; and every moving, every resting thing, 
a caryatic or columnar support of the divine entablature. 
Wherever he looked were altars — wherever he listened was the 
chant of praise — wherever he tended, spread a chancellated 
ground. In every spot was seen a God, or the garments of a 
God ; mementoes of adoration were every where abounding. 
From off the morning hills the sheeted mists arose with silent 
pomp of homage ; and with a gentle burst of holy joy the bub- 
bling fountain bounded to the earth. The commonest act of 



i^TAT. 21.] RELIGION AND POETRY. 395 

life was worship ; for over all a deity held sway, and aureoled 
all with piety. It was the peculiar blessing of this creed that 
there was nothing, and there were none, beneath religion ; the 
lowliest feeling had its warder in the skies ; and the chosen re- 
presentative of every sentiment being but an exalted man, always 
retained a sympathy with humanity. When the timorous ma- 
riner called upon the name of Neptune, or, gazing on the low- 
ering sky, sighed for the aid of the storm-assuaging brothers, 
he felt that his hopes were suspended from them by the chain of 
a common nature. When the warrior, about to loose the dart, 
or lanch the spear, cried to "the God of the Silver Bow," he 
knew that while his patron had the power of an Olympian, he 
had the feelings of an honest brother of the chase ; the Chris- 
tian would have trembled at the profanity of such a prayer. 
But while this religion secured more general and constant ac- 
knowledgment of God, it brought many great and fatal evils, 
for as Moses in the presence of his God shone celestial, so did 
the brightness of those deities always among men, fade into 
human pallor, and they descended in sanctity as they did in sta- 
tion. The mythology even became an instrument of evil : for 
as religion was the offspring, it soon became the slave, of pas- 
sion ; and the feeling which had wrought, could warp, divinity. 
Whatever inclination prompted or indolence invited, imagina- 
tion was at hand to stamp with the approbation of some divine 
example ; " and conscience, drunk as with wine, could sanctify 
to them all bloody, all abominable things." Thus was piety, 
like the Britons, destroyed by its allies, and the dome of reli- 
gion, like the fane of Errool, fell by the weight of its own 
pillars. 

As when the thousand stars of niglit rush out, the single 
power of the sun comes on, so did the Christian Lord reveal his 
awful splendor as the heathen gods passed away. Under the 
new faith, and naturally distinct from it, feelings of course arose, 
and were all baptized into the church. But it was soon per- 
ceived that these feelings had no sympathy with heaven, when 
heaven was filled by the exclusive terrors of Jehovah, and that 
they could no more cling to the naked doctrine of " God over 



396 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [iExAT. 21. 

all, always, and in all places," than the myrtle could entwine 
itself about the red-hot thunderbolt. They therefore invented 
the demi-divinity of the virgin, as a rock on which to hang, 
screened from the brilliance of almighty power, and proceeded, 
like sagacious jewellers, to set their God in saints. It has been 
the fashion of late years to class the saint-system of the papal 
church among the most conspicuous monuments of human folly ; 
but folly was not the fault of the Romish hierarchy ; the " wis- 
dom of the serpent" did nothing unwisely. They who made 
the calendar were wise for their own generation : the evils of it 
fell, like England's national debt, on posterity. The progress 
of the matter was in this wise : Religion, as it came from God, 
was not an affair that could whistle through the key hole of a 
nursery, or be made the umpire of a market-house dispute ; 
many acts must therefore be done apart from all religious con- 
sideration, else religion becomes degraded : that which is done 
beyond the eye of piety soon becomes a sin, and the practice 
of sinning soon makes men sinful. To obviate this result, the 
saints were created to be representatives* sub modo of the Lord, 
to keep alive a sense of the divine existence and obligation, and 
bear the truth to many places where the master in person would 
not venture without compromising his dignity ; for the rosary 
might be carried into a corner when the cross would stick fast 
in the door. Again, there are constantly occurring in life a 
large number of little miracles, and a still larger number of 
false stories of them ; if these be referred to chance, the notion 
of a constant providence is lost ; if they be assigned to the 
intervention of the Almighty, omnipotence is degraded. By 
the happy insertion of saints into the chain of agents, the good 
is secured and the evil prevented, — religion is made "familiar," 

■*- 1 remember a fable, I think in Athensous, of Jupiter stopping one night 
at the house of a peasant, with a couple of thunderbolts on his back. The 
cottager, fearing that the bolts might set his house on fire, refused to admit 
the thunderer unless he left his load in the yard ; this was impossible, for the 
deity and his power were "one and inseparable," and the poor god was obliged 
to sleep under a shed. The saints of Christianity were so made as to be gods 
in all respects, only that they did not carry thunderbolts, and were therefore 
admitted as a much safer sort of people. 



^TAT. 21.] KELIGION AND POETRY. 397 

but deity by "uo means vulgar." All hands shared the advan- 
tage. Such were some of the motives that led the framers of 
the wisest system that the earth has ever witnessed to this won- 
derful device, and contributed to make the papal church, what 
it has always appeared to those who observed without prejudice, 
and thought without passion — the very sublimest monument of 
human ingenuity that ever existed. The evils of this invention 
were doubtless foreseen and despised. Those evils I need not 
dwell upon — every thing was brought into the bosom of re- 
ligion, — politics, domestic arrangements, science, war, — and 
" quicquid agunt hommes," was the concern of the priesthood; 
till the ark of the Christian covenant became like Noah's, a 
mere menagerie, in which when human concerns, like the beasts, 
came in at the doors, purity, like the dove, went out at the win- 
dow. The master's prediction became history ; his mustard- 
seed had grown into a tree, and birds, of which most were 
"ohscceni aves,^' found shelter in its branches. The spiritual 
church had for its type the monasteries of the time, in which 
men ate, drank, and slept, and performed all the business of life 
within the consecrated walls. The temple became utterly de- 
filed, and the church fell into a state which called forth the 
sorrow and scorn of all good men. I think that I am right in 
finding the germ of all these abominations in the original error 
of introducing into Christianity affairs which did not belong to 
it, of extending religion much too far in its influence, and of 
thinking that feeling must be consecrated to the Lord. When 
you cut blocks with a razor, the razor it is which suffers. 

The sum and substance of Protestant Christianity is, " Repent 
and Believe;" that much, and no more, of precept came from 
God, and that much, and no more, of performance should go 
back to him. We have seen the evils of joining feeling and 
religion ; let us keep them distinct ; let revealed faith be pre- 
served the same narrow and distinct path which it was made by 
the Almighty finger, and let the natural piety of feeling flow 
like a brook by the side of it, to refresh, but not seduce the 
traveller — to relieve, but not convey him. While sentiment is 
trellised on the outer wall of the temple, it adorns and protects 
34 



398 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [TEtat. 21. 

it ; if it finds its way within, it rends the walls and disorders the 
building. 

Here then lies the true use of poetry in these modern times ; 
I mean human and unreligious poetry, — poetry as a system 
independent on religion in its origin and end', — the poetry of 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wilson, Brydges, and Shelley. Let us 
never look on their conclusions as sacred, nor imagine that they 
form any part of Christianity ; let us not believe that we fulfil 
any direct portion of our vocation and duty as Christian men, 
when we renew within us the mood they exhibit ; but let us read 
them to keep our sympathies tender, our moral perceptions deli- 
cate, our hearts free and open, our hopes fresh and springing, 
and our whole nature elevated, pure, and unselfish. When this 
is done, then let us go to prayer. 

Another advantage springs from the fictions of poetry as long 
as it is kept apart from religion. In these latter days, when phi- 
losophy has explained all the material phenomena of the uni- 
verse, we are in danger of resting on second causes, and losing 
the many excitements to pious feeling which the ancients had ; 
and the golden lies of the poet are of infinite benefit in keeping 
open in our breasts the springs of wonder, and preserving in the 
world some traces of mystery. The heathen poet tells us that 
he was converted by hearing a clap of thunder in a clear day ; 
noio, it is only by a bold poetic fiction, that in the thunder 
" God in judgment passes by;" and these fictions, though not 
accepted by the intellect, have their effect upon the heart. 
When poetry leads us among the false mysteries of the outer 
world, it keeps alive a sense of the real mysteries of the hidden 
world. I need not say that under this vicAV the line between 
fictitious poetry and true religion must be strictly kept up ; for 
divine revelations must never be married to human inventions. 

I therefore regard " Religious Poetry" as full of evil. 



iETAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE xMOUNTAINS. 399 



MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.* 

BY A COSMOPOLITE. 

[Extract from the Author's Corresjjondcncc, 3farch 3rd, 1843. "I have 
been overrun, my dear Henry, by ten thousand armies of occupation ever 
since I received your request ; engaged daily at my office iron nine in the 
morning till ten at night; investigating some important trust titles, and with 
other engrossing concerns. They have left me little time, and no eye-sight. 
However, I have whirled you off some rhapsodies which you can kick into 
sense or lick into shape. I am only afraid that they are too late for your pur- 
pose. No thanks for them ; for such things I can write by the foot, yard, 
perch, mile, or if necessary even by the league. Don't let me be known in any 
way as author. The preface ' To the Reader,' put in editorially, of course. 
Some persons will probably take it as literally true : others will not 'undergo 
the fatigue' of thinking any thing about that matter ; and it may entertain the 
rest who know or who don't know that the arts of the drama belong to modern 
literature as much as to the stage at any time. Adieu ! Send me some 
good French and German autographs, if you can. I have most English and 
American worth having, and at all easy to be had ,• though I should like one, 
if you can get it, of George Ross, the signer of the Declaration, which is rare. 
I have scores of many of the others, which I will exchange three to one for 
a good George Ross."] 

TO THE READER. 

The following piece belongs to a series of papers which have been given 
to us to be made use of in this paper. The author has too little vanity to be 
diffident; and therefore when we state to our readers that he is one of the 
most extraordinary persons of this age, a man of splendid passions, and bear- 
ing on every feature of his character and mind the unquestionable stamp of 
genius, we are sure that his modesty will not be ofl'ended any more than it 
would be were we to say that he is above six feet in height, with a countenance 
of antique and almost royal dignity, glowing and generous, yet furrowed with 
thought and suffering; showing the fatigues rather than the fires of passion. 
His history has been wild and romantic to the last degree. His birth placed 
him in the first position of distinction and enjoyment in his own country, at a 
time when the pacific revolutions of commerce and the more violent inroads 
of democracy had not confused or shaken the distinct supremacy of the old- 
landed families : but the restlessness of his temper and the impatience of a 
mental energy to which repose was almost madness, made him a wanderer 
from his youth. From the elegant and exclusive luxury of the English no- 

* These pieces, originally designed, as is conjectured from the author's correspondence, 
for another publication, appeared, in part, at a later date in a Magazine of Philadelphia. 

—Ed. 



400 MISCELLANEOUS I'lECES. [^tat. 27. 

bility as it was before the younger Pitt, had "soused it with a flood of spufious 
creations," and from the still more selected society of the French peers before 
the revolution, among whom he spent some years; this singular man set forth 
to travel through some of the most unexplored and inhospitable parts of Eu- 
rope and Asia. He travelled on horseback over Russia and Siberia ;. pene- 
trated into China; lodged for several months in a monastery of Buddhist 
priests in Thibet; traversed Central Asia; and passed two or three years 
among Bedouin Arabs. This last-named people he has visited several 
times, as he claims relationship with some of their chiefs ; his great-grand- 
mother, as we understood him to say, having been the daughter of one of the 
Sheiks, who had come to Constantinople to arrange with the Sultan some dis- 
pute about tribute money. The singular and original stylo of beauty of this 
child of the desert so much impressed one of the ancestors of the person we 
speak of, being then Minister at the Porte, that he married her and brought 
her the next year to England. This anecdote we remember to have seen re- 
lated in the first edition of Dr. Kippis' "Biographical Dictionary;" it was 
omitted in the subsequent impressions, from what cause we do not know. This 
remarkable man has been mixed up with most of the tumults of Europe and 
the intrigues of the eastern world ; besides carrying on a crowded scheme of 
private enterprise and adventure. His age would weigh about seventy years; 
but if his vigor and activity were throwu into the scale of the numbers, fifty 
would give his effective age. As we were conversing the other evening, over 
a few bottles of Metternich hock of the matchless vintage of '34, he fell into 
a discourse about the advantages of old age, which led him to give a few par- 
ticulars of his history and adventures. 

" The Cardinal Alberoni," said he, " is rejiortcd to have expressed the odd 
wish that ho had been born old; I suppose because he would have escaped 
the errors and mistakes of youth. Could a man be born old, yet with the re- 
collection of a past to look back upon, and with all those different strata which 
successive floods of passion deposit upon the character, and witli all the quaint, 
gnomic scrawls which Time writes upon the spirit — ^just as the world, (we 
must suppose, to reconcile Scripture with geology,) was created with all the 
formations that belong to an advanced stage of its existence — I kiiow not but 
that I would join in the Italian's wish : it would be simply so much time 
saved. But as things are settled here below, it is to youth and its fatal blun- 
ders, to manhood and its fruitless acts, that age is indebted for its powers and 
its privileges. I deem it a cheap tutelage that through such painful rudiments 
my soul has learned that dauntless secret of wisdom — nil admirari ; an ele- 
ment and a conclusion of philosophy that is not to be found in the study, nor 
a-field; but is taught only in the merciless college of experience. I rejoice 
that through many toils and after laborious wanderings I have grown old : for 
I am ' donatua rude.' Time, at the end of my pilgrimage, presents me with 
a full charter of emancipation from all prejudices and all delusions. Opinion, 
custom, cant, the authority of schools, the practice of multitudes, the narrow 
maxims with which men love to delucle themselves — those give not the small- 
est bias to my judgment; but free, unfettered, and with the force of genuineness 



.Etat. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 4OI 

ami sincerity, I see into the heart of truth. I have learned never to consult 
the dead reckoning, but always to take an observation for myself. I who 
have seen the Queen of Franco attended with all the magnificence of Ver- 
sailles, with that unrivalled radiance of couutenance which made her, indeed, 
*a star to all the glittering throng,' and have seen the same woman with 
thin, wan features and dishevelled hair, riding in a cart to the guillotine : who 
saw the Emperor Napoleon seated 

nigh on a throne with trophies charged. 
His feet on sceptres and tiaras trod ; 

and a few years later saw a fat, bilious man, in a green coat, on the bleak rock 
of St. Helena, who, they told me, was the same person ; I who have seen a mighty 
empire created in India within the space of half my life, and in the same 
period a battalia of European kings crowned and cashiered ; you may ima- 
gine that I am tolerably disenchanted from all the prestige of royalty and 
greatness. As to wealth and luxurj', I saw something of that before the Ja- 
cobins rendered it necessary to keep a sword in one hand to protect the fork 
in the other. And such as it has been since, I have seen something of it too. 
I have passed months with Beckford at Fonthill, when we kept some days the 
simplicity of an anchorite's meal, and some days sat down to three hundred 
dishes between us, with music and women, and such elaborate elegancies as 
you may conceive when, with an unlimited exchequer, we joined the best in- 
ventions of our genius to contrive what should be most delicious. I have 
revelled, too, with the Prince at Carlton House, where, through many a mid- 
night hour, we drolled it gaily. Often, too, have I passed the night in a tent 
with an old sheik, counselling whence we should steal a kid for our morning's 
broth. The adventitious differences of states and conditions do not, there- 
fore, greatly dazzle my imagination. I have spent years in the different uni- 
versities of Europe, ' apjyro/ondissant les choscs,' of speculation and morals ; 
and I h.ave battled among the sands of the east till my face was bronze and 
my hand as hard as the iron it wielded. For I abhorred, above all things, 
narrowness of thought and feeling; and I loved to bring my soul into sym- 
pathy with all the possible emotions which the heart of man can experience, 
and to multiply my consciousness through all the forms and modes of life. 
Jlost of all, I have taken care to know and be familiar with all the great in- 
tellects that the time has produced in cither continent ; that, communing with 
their minds and studying their farthest speculations, I might know all the 
varieties of the possible as well as the actual, and see all the wonders of the 
world that is not. I have seen systems of philosophy, each more infallible 
than its predecessor, rise in succession only to bo displaced. In one word, I 
knew Europe and literature before the names of Byron and Buonaparte had 
been heard by the world; I know them now when they fill it. Others will 
obliterate their impression, and the curtain which has now fallen, will rise 
again over mightier intellects and more astounding changes. Do you wonder, 
then, that T reverence nothing ; that T approach every thing with an impres- 



402 xMISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

sion of contempt; and, following nothing but the force of my own sojil, I 
think what I like and speak what I list ?" 

Pausing a few minutes, and somewhat musing, while he was quaffing down 
another goblet of this delicious wine, which, he said " mnst have grown close 
under the Castle, and indeed partly over the cellars," and which he assured us 
was much better than any of the 1350 bottles, which coming from the same 
spot had been divided as a rare possession between George IV. and the King 
of Prussia — this extraordinary man began again : and rising to a strain which 
was of a higher mood, thus broke forth: "I cannot live with men. The ho- 
rizon of my being hath not been wont to be bounded by their narrow circle. 
In that tangle of small interests and mist of little passions, which is called 
society, my soul cannot get its breath. I go forth to breathe and find in the 
vast theatre of nature a chamber large enough for it to dwell in. I despise 
not men; I have learned to despise nothing that my Creator hath made; but 
I forget, I ignore them. I cannot live so lonely as they do — divorced from 
nature. I must be among my brethren, the forests, the mountains, and the 
sea, whom I may love ; else my heart pines within me. I have seen those to 
whom the silence of nature was dreadful ; but I have kept my purity, and 
can dwell among the pure. The dark-browed fiend remorse intrudes not 
within my cottage ; my memory is not a whirling cess-pool which heaves up 
the carcasses of old sins to poison the atmosphere of the spirit. I have fol- 
lowed virtue ; I have never degraded my character by vice. By my station I 
was born to great thoughts. Pride and dignity of mind and nature have kept 
me from ever doing a selfish or a wicked action. I have been useful to my 
race. I have labored to be good ; and I have my reward. The good Being 
whom I have served and loved, sendeth his angels. Peace, and Strength, and 
Preedom, to stand around me in mine age. 

" To that cause, too, I owe it that, though grey-haired, my vigor is as fresh 
and my sensibilities as delicate as in the first fervor of my youth. The ar- 
dors of virtue, like the fires of heaven, kindle without consuming ; the heats 
of evil exhaust to ashes. I am old ; but much, both for evil and for good, 
may be done in extreme old age. At a period of life later than that which I 
have reached, Dandolo acquired his greatness, and Bacon lost his honor. 
The minds that break in the decline of life, are usually such as have been 
stretched on the racks of paradox and subtlety; but minds originally strong, 
that have been occupied, though never so laboriously, with truth and sound 
sense, rarely give way even in the decrepitude of the body. The wanderer in 
many lands, and the worker of stern deeds, in whose veins the blood of Plan- 
tagenet flows, mingled with the wilder tide of the Arab, never knew fatigue 
but when compelled to rest, and never tasted repose save in the whirl of ac- 
tion. Otja nescit. To me there is a sting in idleness. Here I shall labor 
greatly, as I have always labored. And the intervals of stronger toil I shall 
relieve by lighter compositions upon letters and taste, which the world may 
care for or condemn, as it sees fit. My ancestors ever did battle against usur- 
pation and tyranny, and they have left me as the motto of my mind and my 
life: 'Above all things — Freedom.'" 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 403 

"From what we bad the advantage of seeing of this eccentric person, it 
struck us that he had attained a more thorough independence in every part 
of his character than any one whom we had met before. In his habits he 
seemed never to consult what was usual; but considered only what was con- 
venient. In expressing his opinions he appeared not even to be aware that 
the world had some settled way of thinking upon any of the subjects he spoke 
of. What seemed to him reasonable, that he uttered. Upon all subjects ho 
seemed perfectly delivered from prejudice; and to possess, not the bigotted 
skepticism of Voltaire, but that more complete Pyrrhonism which is skeptical 
even of its own doubts. His descent is probably as illustrious as that of any 
man in Europe, and he was well conscious of it : but he never, in judging of 
the merits of others, paid any attention to their origin. lie was easy and fa- 
miliar with the lowest as with the well-born. He did not seem to know what 
hauteur was. Though boundless in the pride of his soul, he had not the 
smallest pride of manner. The papers which we shall, from time to time, 
present to our readers, contain reflections upon literature, philosophy and life. 
The author resides at present a recluse among the mountains where he has 
built himself a beautiful home from which he never now goes, except to re- 
fresh himself at a picturesque spot of lofty ground which he owns near the 
sea. He writes a vast deal, and with great rapidity. The papers which we 
give below are perhaps the most careless compositions of the whole; but as 
they are not without something characteristic of the writer, we have thought 
them worth printing. — Eds. 



Once more, back to the life of the Mind !^ — to the spring and 
the flash of ■ Thought, and the boundless sweep of the Feelings ! 
In the atmosphere of the world I can no longer get my breath ; 
in its keenest enterprises I live but half my being : but, here, amid 
the solitudes of the mountains and the sky, I once more feel my 
soul within me. The glow and might of Nature inspire again 
that luxury of conscious power, which, in my hours of young en- 
thusiasm, once made existence ecstasy, when the braye children 
of the Soul flew forth, with rush of strength, over Life and Earth, 
to revel in the wealth of conquest. By sympathy with her snb- 
limeness, my spirit is refreshed and comforted. 

For my own part, I have always been of opinion that the only 
sort of life worth leading, is that intense and fiery life, in which 
the poorness of our mortality is merged and drowned in the flood 
of the soul's eternal forces, — that fierce existence, in which the 



404 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

buried lustre of our creation-flame is flashed out from the depths 
of our nature, to gild and glorify our career — that thronged, still- 
crescive vehemence of feeling which presses the heart into calm- 
ness through rapture. Of every pursuit I have made a passion, 
and never deemed the car of life worth mounting, save when its 
axle was a-blaze with swiftness. With the blank half- vitality of 
those who dream out the dulness of their years, lacking " sense 
to be right, and passion to be wrong," I had no sympathy; but 
wherever there was turmoil and effort, the dash of action, or the 
daring of the mind, there was something kindred to my thoughts. 
Born with these impetuous tempers — with a spirit that loved 
to breathe itself in the chase of the splendid and the great, and 
in the full stretch and strain of the faculties to taste the relish 
of the Infinite, — I plunged into society and the world, equally 
ready to dally with their softnesses or grapple with their strength. 
Vixi. I have lived indeed. I have wrung from life some of its 
deepest, dearest treasures, — the pearls of its sweetest pleasant- 
ness, — its blazing diamonds of delight. The joy that is in the 
fresh, bold dreams of Power — rthe purple luxuries of -Passion — ■ 
the glory of the far-gleaming visions of Love — the wild, trancing 
promises of its pursuit^ — and the rapturous madness of possession 
— these I drank largely from Youth's foaming cup. Sed, licec 
prius fuere. That cup is now empty. Those interests are ex- 
hausted. I have lived through, them ; I have consumed them by 
partaking. That quick galvanic action which took place when 
boyhood first plunged into the stream of affairs has ceased. 
Merely to enjoy what exists around me is no longer sufficiently 
exciting : I must make the life I would partake ; and in that 
stress of soul, which is creation, I must find a refuge from the 
terrible fatigue of listlessness. So then, the resources of the 
earth being spent, I come back to dwell amongst the energies of 
Thought. 

This life of ours seems to me to be a kind of desperate en- 
counter between the world, which is Time's eldest champion, and 
the soul of man, which is the youngest offspring of Eternity ; in 
which, while the latter seeks to sna^tch pleasure and knowledge 
from its mortal enemy, the former strives to paralyze the vigor. 



^TAT. 27.] ^MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 405 

to kill the hopes, and to convulse the serenity of its angelic an- 
tagonist. To withdraw from the struggle, like Solomon, over- 
whelmed with exhaustion and despair, or, like Byron, maddened 
with resentment and flaming with the hate and indignation of a 
deceived and duped existence, is surely proof of weakness and 
defeat. I own no such faint and yielding soul. The world and 
I have met in conflict : I have gained from it a thousand trophies ; 
from me it boasts not one. I now fling from me the powerless 
foe, and, calm, confident, and strong, I go forth to glad myself in 
fields of nobler force. Were I one as impotent to endure as I 
am sensitive to feel, memory were to me a staple from which I 
might spin out the thread of an everlasting sadness. For me, 
that sun of expectation which lighted life's vapors into magni- 
ficence and splendor has sunk below the horizon — 'and the chilly 
scene has grown cheerless, gray and desolate. The friends who 
cheered me once, the companions to whom I was of importance, 
have disappeared. She — the endlessly beautiful — profuse of 
charms as prodigal in vows — the girl, aniata nobis, quantum 
amahitur nulla — has deserted me ; and that other being — that 
great and graceful spirit — august with loveliness — the glory and 
the anguish of my life — whose flame of soul was wont to mix and 
blaze with mine — has fled from the earth, and left me the legacy 
of eternal solitude. The gilded train of passions, fancies and 
desires, that once girt my proud and conquering soul, has 
vanished, and I am indeed alone. But what is this to me ? The 
stern, wild force of a spirit like mine laughs at calamity like 
this ; and roused into its savageness of strength, hurls away from 
it the tyranny of the Past, and draws back into the eternity of 
its own self-born and self-sufficing power. What are the rattling 
arrows of the storm to one who sits above the clouds ? The 
mortal of my being I give to agony and dissolution ; but the 
death of the mortal is the delivery of the immortal. That ethe- 
real energy within me which hath the temper and the touch of 
everlasting, rises with swan-like beat of wing, and, spreading its 
unmoulted plumage to the morning, soars upward, breasting the 
golden light. 

Time has somewhat blanched my cheeks, but not paled the 



406 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^.tat. 27. 

fires of my bosom. My heart hath done battle with the wast- 
inguess of troops of griefs ; but neither the strong assault of the 
days, nor the crushing uses of our daily existence, nor wrong, 
nor solitude, nor remorse, have had power to tame the soul 
which they tortured, or beat back one of the deathless aspirations 
of my nature. As gaily and as glowingly as ever does my spirit 
launch forth its eager forces ; my breast still thrills with the ex- 
ulting sense of conflict and victory. Confidence goeth out with 
the morning ; and blue-eyed Joy with fair-fronted Peace come 
smiling to me in the evening. From the failure of the outward, 
I have learned the vigor of my own being ; and my maturer life 
realizes what mine youth would not be taught, that Action is 
the child of Time, but Thought is an inhabitant of Eternity. 

It has been said by an eminent French pilosopher that there 
is no glory on earth but the military. Doubtless great memories 
are connected with the sword, and deep feelings answer to its 
flash. When we behold the famous conqueror of our own days, 
going out in the splendor of his power, and all the pageantry of 
force. — moving like the thunder-cloud, to strike like its fire — and 
listen to the tramp of the host, a sound so ominous and terrible, 
and to the pealing music which seems to shatter the heavens, and 
whirls our feelings for a moment into forces beyond mortality, 
and gaze on that marvel of discipline wherein manhood itself 
seems to render homage to intellect, as the suggestions of one 
understanding operate to mass multitudes together and infuse 
into them an instinct to serve, to suffer and be slain — the group 
of horsemen from out whose midst issue the rapid syllables that 
are spells to oversweep the force of fate — the flying messengers 
that convey to the kindling mass the electric fires of one glowing 
will — the keen survey of the field, the quick combination, the ad- 
vance, the victory, and in the midst of all this breathless turmoil 
— the spirit of the hero then reposing in the prophetic calmness 
of the triumph — the despatch written on the saddle-bow, to fix 
the destiny of distant nations — the couriers coming and going 
with intelligence of battles in the north, and with words that 
shall be the history of the west — when we look with terrified 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMO^fG THE MOUNTAINS. 40^7 

amazement ou this scene, truly we feel as if the crowning great- 
ness of onr condition were before us. 

But, mightier and more majestic yet is the spectacle, when, 
sublime and still, in mystery of strength, the mind of man pro- 
ceedeth forth through the void unknown of meditation. Its 
march is creation, and glory is in its repose. Star-hk?, advanc- 
ing to the sound of its own inherent music, the lustre of beauty 
which swells from its presence, thickens into crystal forms of truth 
which beam with the brightness of the life forever. With pomp 
of cloud-like grandeur, the dreams of the passions move on before 
and waste themselves through the infinite, while the armed hosts 
of the thoughts, with a spontaneous glitter beyond the sun, 
plant, on all the pinnacles of time, trophies that tower through 
the blue vault of eternity. In the purple of the rays that stream 
from that far-effulgent essence, the trivial things of earth are 
seen to be symbols of a profound significance, and signatures of 
a wondrous import ; and even the torn vapors that fleet in the 
train of the fair procession of the morning, when lit by the flame 
of its coming, gleam like banners of celestial texture, stamped 
with the watchwords of Purity and Hope. When thus the fa- 
culties of man move upon the deep of existence, to gather into 
stars of Truth the pale, primal light of Nature, or to fashion 
new worlds of Art and give to their orbits a being among the 
eternal things of the universe, we behold a witness that our souls 
are portion of the Divine Spirit, and that our destiny is co-eter- 
nal with His element ; for to create is the incommunicable at- 
tribute of Godhood, and an everlasting progeny cannot be born 
of the mortal. 

To me, here dwelling alone amidst the old serenities of nature, 
thoughts are ever coming and going, and feelings touch me and 
pass on. In the silence of the early morning, I am visited by 
the wandering scouts of the Intellect, who report to me of the 
distant, the wonderful, the divine ; and, in the musings of the 
darkness, gazing into the depths of the soul, the myriad forms of 
sentiment reveal to me their beauty by their own phosphoric 
lustre. To unsphere these angels of the mind from the universe 
of the spirit, and send them forth, in language to bear to men 



408 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

the greetings of a brother, and woo for me the love of noble 
hearts, is necessary to the quiet of a nature that never knew re- 
pose but in the tension of the faculties. Not to remit or rest 
have I come hither, but for loftier toils in larger tracts of effort. 
A breast that hath been wrung as mine has been — that, fated 
quickly to feel, and never to forget, went out into life, and in its 
youthful fervor filled its depths with pleasures in whose recesses 
anguish had its birth-place — whose sad destiny it has been to 
regret its best feelings, and curse its very virtues as the cause 
of its ruin — to which misfortune has been for guilt, and the sins 
of others for a remorse — such a bosom may be silent in its 
strength, and calm in pride of power ; but that austere tran- 
quillity is not rest, and the stillness of that self-mastery is born 
of the storm. From the mountain-heights of meditation, I look 
down upon low, earth-born mists that no longer come near me, 
and I taste a clear, and pure, and wholesome atmosphere ; yet, 
ever and anon, forming itself out of sun-light and summer airs, 
the dark cloud, which is the shade of Nature's offended counte- 
nance, gathers around, and the secrets of the Great Fear that 
awaiteth in the invisible are syllabled in the tones of thunder, ox, 
shot forth in the rubric signals of the lightning. Such is the 
moral mystery of our being ! Our very existence seems to be a 
sin, and life is a perpetual repentance for itself. The blood of 
youth is joy, and the old age of joy is contrition ; pleasure is the 
sweet spring-blossom of feeling, and pain is its bitter autumnal 
berry. It is well ! it is well ! For as it is the unquiet of the sea 
which forms the crest that sparkles on its shores, so from the tumult 
and agony of the spirit is splendor of thought flung forth. Grief 
of heart is the quickening spell of the mind's inspiration ; and 
the ruin of the individual is the glory of the race. 

It is the waning-time of night. Let us leave these morbid 
musings with which we have beguiled the midnight hour, and 
go forth to look upon the dawn. 

No sound, no motion ! yet it is the mighty coming of the day. 
All night, no cloud hath been seen abroad ; no mist hath 
dimmed the effulgent ether between the glittering stars. All is 
solitary, still, and cold. The first wave of the light rolls for- 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 409 

ward, and scatters its snowy foam throughout the air. For the 
tide of the great ocean of Infinity, whose flood is darkness and 
whose ebb is day, has begun its resistless flow ; and the bark of 
the sun-god, who stands prepared to spring upon the heavens, 
nears upon the swelling waters. The pure bosom of the sky is 
flushed at the rude invasion of its beauty, and as the glowing 
presence of the day-prince grows more intense and instant, its 
blushes deepen from roseate into purple, till it seems as it would 
faint with excess of feeling. It throbs with the quick-darting 
pulses of emotion, and its white breast, made delicately carmine 
by its virgin wishes, lies, like the bride of the morning, passion- 
ing with expectancy. 

What wild and solemn rapture the silent heavens flash down 
upon the soul I The Spirit of Power, that inhabits in the 
bosom of man, struggles forth to press to itself the Spirit of 
Beauty, which smiles down upon it from the depths of the blue 
air ; and, as they wrestle in that strong embrace, Joy shouts 
aloud the honors of the contest. Limitless splendor ! Ineffable 
delight 1 I ask no immortality but this 1 In the bliss of mo- 
ments such as now, I feel that I partake Eternity. In truth, 
these deeps of spiritual consciousness contain, and are, forever, 
that unlocal, dateless Heaven, which men, duped by the dazzling 
images of the tribe and the market into mistaking succession of 
visible existence for degrees of moral life, have vainly pictured 
as future and far-distant. The infant day lies in pearly love- 
liness, cradled between the earth and heaven, while its smiles of 
light float wreath-like through the air. As I gaze into the 
unbounded scene, the remote and viewless gates of the Infinite 
seem to be opened, and the lustrous atmosphere, forth-stream- 
ing, rolls over the world a surge of glory which wafts with it 
the breezy freshness of a celestial bliss ; the soul bathing in the 
stainless waters is made pure with holy strength. The Present 
and the Distant, the Actual and the Impossible seem to be 
tumbled together in this tumultuous prodigality of splendor ; 
the softest forms of Memory are revived, and Hope's most golden 
aspirations are made real ; and the faculties, expanded by the 
swell of passion, seem to pervade and to possess the universe. 
3.5 



410 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

I never understood so feelingly as to-day what the Prince of 
Denmark meant when he said that he was only mad nor' nor'- 
west. If the bold breezes that hail from that quarter rushed 
on Elsineur as they rush upon this headland where we stand, I 
do not wonder if they dashed into his soul an inspiration whose 
wilduess might seem like an insanity in one whose spirit, when 
the wind was southerly, was sicklied over with the paler cast of 
thought, or flushed by sweet affections to a hue no deeper than 
the rath primrose. As the stimulating influence sweeps stronger 
and fuller from the windows of the sky, the mind becomes charged 
with a sensitiveness of fervor, which would be calm and rational 
if it might cope with those divine interests which in the earn- 
estness of this moment it blindly apprehends, but which is a 
drunkenness of the faculties when turned among earthly objects. 
For my own part, I can withstand the graciousness of nature, 
and can harden my spirit into a wanton kind of ingratitude when 
she woos my love with spring airs from the west, or summer 
breezes of the south, for well she knows that the turbulent and 
torn heart of her son is mocked more than soothed by such 
gentleness ; but when she condescends to loftier pains of pleas- 
ing, and, waking the harmonies of strength, and sounding the 
lower notes of her organ of the winds, pours over the earth the 
free, wild music of the north, I am stung into a delight that 
overflows to tears ; for with those deep, melancholy tones of 
might my nature is accordant. To be great, I ask little but 
north winds and leisure. 



No. II. 

Wherefore should the soul of man droop or be disquieted 
within him, while God has vouchsafed to us such sublime sources 
of consolation as the mountains, the sea, and the splendors 
of the sun-rise ? — The watches of the night are over : Silence 
guarded the stern vigils of suffering and gloom, till, like a gush 
of love, the melody of morning burst from the skies, and scat- 
tered the coward troop of solitude. Calm with the confidence 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 4U 

of joy — happy as he to whom his friends have returned — I have 
stood upon this mountain-rock, from the budding dawn of liglit, 
till now, when the full-expanded flower of day is blooming on 
the stalk of Time, shedding the odor of brightness through the 
universe. Exalted scene of might made beautiful by boundless 
Love ! There are, to whom Night with her stars and stillness 
is a fascination : the deepest, wildest throb of delight that quiv- 
ers through my being, is when the first red gleam of the sun is 
flashed across the abyss of air, like the signal-gun of a mon- 
arch's coming. Beyond every living thing in Nature, my feel- 
ings are with him : when I behold his shining, all the faculties 
of my existence swell forth to meet his forces. The slackened 
nerve of energy once more is bent up, and " a short youth runs 
warm through every vein." 

August and sovereign Sun ! Presence of grandeur ! Image 
of high command ! Thy rising is a sacrament of strength ; and 
in our souls' communion with thy rays, the eternal covenants of 
Hope are renewed, and our being's high sympathy with Truth 
and Virtue is again established. Power is born within thy pa- 
laces of Light, and influences of Pleasure ride on thy rushing 
beams. Stern orb of Destiny ! what issues attend upon thy 
coming ! Thy motions are our Fate, and thy progress up yonder 
blue arch of Heaven shall be the Anguish or the Joy of Na- 
tions. Fierce firstling of omnipotence ! in whose form Infinity 
grew palpable in splendors, when earliest its excess of energy 
overflowed into creation. Almost titles of divinity are thine. 
Thy changes are earth's epochs : our passions and our actions 
wait on thee : thou goest up in glory, leading the hosts of Being. 
Author of order 1 Token of Him that made the universe ! To 
thee it is given daily to renew the wonders of the primal miracle, 
and call the earth into beauty, from the deep of Night and 
Nothingness ! Nay, even beyond the marvel of that type, thou 
makest each morning as many worlds as there are minds within 
it, for that dawning which seemed as general as the heavens is as 
particular as each human heart. The mingled music of thy 
seven-toned lyre rolls over the earth ; childhood's gentle spirit, 
light-slumbering on its violet-bed of visions, catches the Jinest 



412 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^Etat. 27. 

sound of tlie rich symphony — the joy-note of the strain — and, 
trembling into fine accord with it, wakes to its fairer, falser 
dream of real life : the strong, full tone of Duty sounds, swells 
and echoes through the soul of manhood ; the laxer ear of age 
faintly hears the deep, harsh note of Custom, heavily vibrating 
with weight of memories. From thy golden fountains wells 
forth that perennial stream whence all drink Life and Conscious- 
ness ; to different lips, how various is the taste ; to some, as 
sweet as praise ; to some, more bitter than the draughts of 
Death ! Proud, melancholy orb ! lone in thy lordliness ! thou 
dwellest in thy solitudes of splendor, and pourest thy bounty 
ceaselessly on all things, and meetest with no return. Sublime 
in thine unsocial greatness ! beyond the sympathies of those on 
whom thy blessedness is lavished I sustained by the great hap- 
piness of doing good without reward 1 satisfied, through a thou- 
sand ages, with the pure consciousness of duty ! Thou art the 
type and teacher of the life of man. Shine on, most glorious 
orb ; we hail in thee the elder brother of our souls, in whose 
grandeur our nature is ennobled. 

Wearied by the fret and wretchedness of society — vexed and 
saddened in spirit by its miserable monotony of littleness — I 
have come to dwell amidst the expanses of Nature, that I may 
find that companionship which the world does not afford me, and 
inhale that bracing air of loftiness and force by which my youth- 
ful soul was nurtured. From the exhausting fervoi's of action — 
the rage of ignoble passions — the excitements which convulse — 
the experiences which deprave the heart — I turn, with what 
large relief of feeling ! to these wide, kingly scenes, which, while 
they stimulate and stir, still raise, invigorate, and calm. I have 
ever loved to have my being the subject of great impressions ; 
and I find nothing that is great in the politics, the business, or 
the literature of this time. But when I seek the forests or the 
hills, I am sure of being in a majestic presence. Severe or soft, 
serene or in storms, Nature at least is always grand. In all her 
moods, she wears an aspect of sublimity. Qualities of might 
dwell among her retreats. The springs of energy are amidst 
her depths. Peace spreads her courts of mystic power within 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 4I3 

her valleys : sentiments of Purity float, like their snowy mists, 
around her monumental hills. As we breathe her atmosphere 
of greatness, that generosity of feeling, which the world had 
well nigh strangled, lives again within us. From her fellowship, 
we knit to our souls that magnanimity which is the noblest trea- 
sure of our nature, the ornament and crest of character, a god- 
like quality above the name of virtue. Her solitudes are 
inspiration ; in them we meet with sensations which are not of 
Time — impressions, weird, startling, not exempt from terror — 
suggestions of the Eternal. Her breezes, to me, are spirits of 
power from the far home of the soul, issuing forth with ghostly 
visitation, to whet the almost blunted purposes of Ambition, 
and sting the mind into Resolution through Remorse ; they 
search the chambers of the spirit, and champion all its strength. 
Flushed into tameless force, by those influences which light the 
gyr-eagle's blazing eyes, and charge his feathers with swiftness. 
Thought springs into the boundless vast, and, with sounding 
pinion, wings the wide, silent sleep. From her choirs, the poet's 
strain snatches sounds that out-voice the tempests of a thousand 
years. Those endless, ever-swelling harmonies that roll in upon 
the soul from the broad sea of Homer's verse, were fashioned 
of her echoes. Hers are the eternal fires that kindle up the soft 
transparencies of Spenser. Mighty as were Lord Byron's na- 
tive faculties, it was to his communion with nature, chiefly, that 
he was indebted for that flashing grandeur of imagination, that 
rush of soul and torrent-strength of an unblenching mind, and 
the charm of a spirit magnificently changeful. 

In my earlier days, while the cloud of the Infinite yet hung 
around the soul, informing it with the electric might that dwells 
in mystery, I needed not the sight of outward objects to delight, 
nor the force of outward agencies to strengthen me. My youth 
is to me a recollection of delight. Existence then was energy ; 
Thought was beauty ; Consciousness was joy. The musing 
spirit teemed with creations of loveliness and light ; I thought 
that its spontaneous wealth could never be exhausted. Fuhere 
quondam candidi iibi i^ole?. That time is gone — that pleasant 
time, when, every morning, soft, l")udding thoughts were cluster- 



414 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [.Etat. 27. 

ing round my mind — when, within the inward empyrean of me- 
ditation, shapes of enchantment, sparlding as morning on the 
bhie Egean, spotted with splendor, rose and floated through the 
sapphire atmosphere, as the wreathed clouds beneath a stain- 
less sky slowly unveil themselves out of the invisible air. But 
though the day of that ethereal susceptibility is gone, in which 
the pulsations of the blood were impressions of the Intellect, 
when I felt Fancies, and Thought was almost a physical sensa- 
tion, yet my sensibility to the effects of excellence in outward 
things is as quick and tumvdtuous as ever. The faintest appear- 
ances of that nameless divine essence wake my feelings into 
kindling life. There still remains within me, undiminished by 
calamities and cares, that calm, intense, and exquisite percep- 
tion which can distill from beauty the drops of ecstasy. Time, 
who as often plays the sudden robber as the subtle thief, has 
snatched from me many a gift of strength and many a grace of 
pleasure ; but he has left me still the power daily to hang against 
the eastern sky a picture whose glow of gorgeousness fires 
my nature into rapture ; the power to be delighted almost to 
delirium with the rising of the sun ; to apprehend in the beau- 
tiful a majesty which almost bows down and prostrates my being 
before it. And though that mantling luxury of strength which 
for its own relief threw forth the forms of grace, and that warm 
flush of sentiment which colored them into celestial loveliness, 
have vanished — not fading by their own weakness, but burned 
out by the blaze of the passions — their removal has discovered 
stronger and more enduring faculties in the resources of the re- 
solute Will. And I have learned to see in the fictions of the 
mind a far deeper value and significance, and a far loftier office, 
than I had conceived of in the wantonness of boyish fancy. 
Let no man regret the decline of youthful fervor ; for the world 
brings to us a knowledge and a power beyond all that our birth 
bestowed. The revelations of Time are full of wisdom. I have 
learned to see in that dreaming which was the idleness of child- 
hood, the true dignity and highest destiny of man. 

There is in Life an idea above Life. The being of man is 
infected with the apprehension of a state and character of exist- 



iETAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 415 

ence beyond tlie experience of his daily consciousness. Toward 
this condition, his nature is stung by a perpetual and inherent 
uneasiness ; and in it alone it rests. This Life above Life is 
Beauty ; and the mean of its realization is Art. 

When we attain to the Beautiful, we pass to a different region 
— we rise into another world. For though the Ideal is, in its 
direct analysis, but the development, completion, and perfect- 
ness of the Actual, yet in impression and effects the change is 
of essence. In those subjects of more complex and intricate 
relation which lie above the range of mechanical considera- 
tions, form constitutes character. The chymist can reproduce 
the substance of every element and every organ in animal life ; 
the form, he cannot produce. In the capacity to impart Form, 
consists the mystery of creation. 

Sensible images being the most dominant in our constitution, 
the Beauty of material shape is that with which we are most 
conversant ; and to the laws of its existence and evolution, we 
give, by emphasis, the name of Art. But to every faculty of 
our nature, and every subject of our cognizance, belong its pecu- 
liar beauty, and its appropriate Fine Art. Truth is the beauty 
of Intellectual form, and Science is the art which deals with it. 
Goodness is the beauty of the affections, and Religion is the fine 
art which undertakes to produce it. Yirtue is the beauty of 
morals, and Philosophy is the aesthetics of that perfectness. So- 
ciety is the beauty of the grand ensemble of human action, and 
Politics is the sublime and profoundly difficult art by which it is 
attained. There are minds to which the abstract beauty of ma- 
thematical forms presents itself so objectively that they p-erceive 
in it a richness beyond even the luxury of pictures ; but they are 
rare souls, fashioned in Nature's pride. 

To evolve the Beautiful, in all its various departments, is the 
end and object of man's existence ; it is the great duty of our 
species. We were formed, not to enjoy, but to produce. The 
life of the race is a grand and continuing process of creation 
in which Deity acts, not directly, but through the medium of 
man's nature. And this glorious purpose of our being is ac- 
complished mainly by those things which we blindly call the 



416 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [iRTAT. 27. 

defects and evils of our nature and condition. For suffering is 
tlie source of action, the moving pow^er of the moral being. 
Man never moves, and cannot move, but upon the impulses of 
Buffering ; even when led on by foregoing pleasures, he advances 
because the thought of a pleasure unpossessed is pain. Were we 
happy, we should be cyphers. Moral evil is therefore the ser- 
vant of God's design, and a minister of man's greatness ; for 
goodness renders men happy, and wickedness is necessary to fill 
their souls with the forces of wretchedness. It is thus, by throw- 
ing imperfection and the consequent power of pain into the 
world, and evil with its attendant energy into the human heart, 
that the sublime career of life has been set going. Beauty is in 
its own nature immortal, serene and satisfying ; and its immor- 
tality is the appointed refuge of our souls from the stings and 
punishments of Time. Our disappointments and our sorrows 
are our truest friends ; for they compel us to create. Our suf- 
ferings are our glory. Pain is the kindly discipline of him that 
would have us to be great. We are hunted into greatness : we 
are whipped and scourged into Fame. Cast thine eyes upon 
the splendid productions of the past, thou that murmurest at 
the dispensations of Providence, and see the sublime monument 
of man's woes and wants, his privations, his inward agonies ; 
and behold the justification of creative love. Persons may be 
destroyed ; hearts may be crushed ; but the beaming car of In- 
tellectual Life moves on in glittering majesty and sounding 
pomp. God is glorified ; and man, made honorable in despite 
of his wishes, leaves the tracks of Time strewed with the spoils 
of Eternity. 

The treasures of Art are the trophies of our race. Of an 
essence beyond mortality — gleaming with an inherent, star-soft 
lustre — they hang on high along the firmament of Fame, the 
appropriate and imperishable evidences of the lofty destiny of 
him from whom they emanated. They are the sublime and 
silent signals by which the Past converses with the Future. 
Time, whose touch is the tarnish of the earthly, is to them a 
handmaid and a beautifier. They gather those rays of another 
sphere which arc wandering through our atmosphere, and reflect 



iErAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 417 

them dowu upon our spirits. They are a presence of Eternity 
amid the changeful strifes of the world. 

And why has not this age and country given forth its contin- 
gent of immortal works ? Why should we remain forever 
appalled and paralyzed by the perfections of Grecian excellence ? 
Who shall set up the pillars of literature, and say, " Beyond the 
daring of the Past, Futurity shall never go ?" Men still are 
men ; the inspiring forces of sky and earth, of rock and water, 
are not diminished. On each new morning of creation the ma- 
jestic life of Nature rouses itself in all its beauty, and, shaking 
magnificence from all its motions, goes forth in power, and joy, 
and thrilling youth ; shall not our spirit attend its march, and 
be incorporate with it in ever-living force ? There is no lack 
of energy in the character of our country ; but it is wasted upon 
interests, transitory and deciduous. The power of the modern 
soul, swept by passions which the elder world knew not of, often 
foams into splendor ; but it is a flash as wild and evanescent as 
the yellow gleam of the morning ray upon the dashing waves 
of the Adriatic. Instead of that intense concentration of power 
and purpose which brought all the light of Being to one star- 
like focus, we behold, in the instincts of the modern character, 
a tendency to disperse and scatter the rays of mind. Single, 
almost to narrowness, calm, self-controlled, ajid patient, the 
Greek sought ever to turn every shape to beauty, to garner up 
every feeling into the perpetuity of art ; hence, while our results 
are fragmentary and fugitive, his productions have a character 
of Everlasting. 

The causes of the inferiority, or rather the utter and absolute 
failure, of modern effort, I think that I can in some slight de- 
gree unfold. They consist mainly in our not understanding the 
true nature of Art, in what it consists, and of what dignity it 
is. I love my fellows, and I love my country ; though I asso- 
ciate not with the one, and extol not the other. I cherish, above 
every other wish, the desire to see my countrymen come forward 
into the line of the true greatness of the race ; and at some 
future time I hope to find, among the youthful men of genius in 
our land, a few hearers of the views which I have to offer 



418 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [JEtat. 27. 

Taking up their writings, and those which have been their mo- 
dels, I shall suggest to them that they have not yet attained one 
correct conception of what Art is — that they have still to ac- 
quire the first elements of sesthetical education. 



How glorious, above all earthly glory, are the faculty and 
mission of the Poet ! His are the flaming thoughts that pierce 
the veil of heaven — his are the feelings, which on the wings of 
raptui-e sweep over the abyss of ages. The star of his being 
is a splendor of the world. 

The Poet's state and attributes are half divine. The breezes 
of gladness are the heralds of his approach ; the glimpse of his 
coming is as the flash of the dawn. The hues of Conquest flush 
his brow : the anger of triumph is in his eyes. The secret of 
Creation is with him ; the mystery of the Immortal is amongst 
his treasures. The doom of unending sovereignty is upon his 
nature. The meditations of his mind are Angels, and their issu- 
ing forth is with the strength of Eternity. The talisman of his 
speech is the sceptre of the free. The decrees of a dominion 
whose sway is over spirits, and whose continuance is to everlast- 
ing, go out from before him ; and that ethereal essence, which is 
the untamable in man — which is the liberty of the Infinite 
within the bondage of life — is obedient to them. His phrases 
are the forms of Power ; his syllables are agencies of Joy. 

With men in his sympathies, that he may be above them in 
his influence, his nature is the jewel-clasp that binds Humanity 
to Heaven. It mediates between the earthly and celestial : in 
the vigor of his production, divinity becomes substantial ; in the 
sublimity of his apprehensions, the material loses itself into 
spirit. It is his to drag forth the eternal from our mortal form 
of being — to tear the Infinite into our bounden state of action. 
What conqueror has troops like his ? — the spirit-forces of Lan- 
guage — those subtle slaves of Mind, those impetuous masters 
of the Passions — whose mysterious substance who can compre- 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AJVIONG THE MOUNTAINS. 419 

hend — whose mighty operation what can combat ? Evolved, 
none knoweth how, within the curtained chambers of existence 
— half-physical, half-ideal, and finer than all the agencies of 
Time — linked together by spells, which are the spontaneous 
magic of genius, which he that can use, never understands — the 
weird hosts of words fly forth, silently, with silver wings, to win 
resistlessly against the obstacles of Days, and Distance, and 
Destruction, to fetter nations in the viewless chains of admira- 
tion, and be, in the ever-presence of their all-vitality, the immor- 
tal portion of their author's being. Say what we will of the 
real character of the strifes of war, and policy, and wealth, the 
accents of the singer are the true acts of the race. What prince, 
in the secret places of his dalliance, uses such delights as his ? 
Passing through the life of the actual, with its transitory blisses, 
its deciduous hopes, its quickly waning fires, his interests dwell 
only in the deep consciousness of the soul and mind, to which 
belong undecaying raptures, and the tone of a godlike force. 
Within that glowing universe of Sentiment and Fancy, which 
he generates from his own strenuous and teeming spirit, he is 
visited by immortal forms, whose motions torment the heart 
with ecstasy^ — whose vesture is of light — whose society is a 
fragrance of all the blossoms of Hope. To him the True ap- 
proaches in the radiant garments of the Beautiful ; the Good 
unveils to him the princely splendors of her native lineaments, 
and is seen to be Pleasure. His soul lies strewn upon its flow- 
ery desires, while, from the fountains of ideal loveliness, flows 
softly over him the rich, warm luxury of the Fancy's passion. 
His Joys are Powers ; and it is the blessedness of his condition 
that Triumph to him is prepared not by toil, but by indulgence. 
Begotten by the creative might of rapture, and beaming with 
the strength of the delight of their conception, the shapes of 
his imagination come forth in splendor, and he fascinates the 
world with his felicities. 

Art is greater than Science ; for to create is more than to 
know. In science, we explore the harmony and order of things 
in their relations to a centre infinitely from them and us : by 
Art, we compel, through the transmuting ardors of our moral 



420 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

being, things to assume a new order and harmony in relation to 
ourselves as a centre. The natural sciences are God's fine arts ; 
the fine arts, as we know them, are the manifestations and mo- 
numents of man's divinity. 

The scientific faculty is the pure Intellect : artistic energy 
lies in the conjunction of the Passions and Intellect. Intellect, 
warmed, animated and urged by the interfused fire of the Pas- 
sions — Passion, illuminated, informed, and guided by the perva- 
sive light of Intellect — is the creative faculty or force in man. 
Material instinct, raised and rarified by thought, is the ideal. 
In the race and in the individual, the era of art is at the com- 
mencement of the middle period of existence ; for then the pas- 
sions and the intellect are in the due degree of equipoise. 

True Science, then, consists in a subjection of the mind to 
the forms actually existing in the outer world : Art is the sub- 
jecting of the substance of outward things to the forms pre- 
existing in the mind. Art, therefore, through all its multiform 
illustrations, is of two parts ; the natural substance and the 
imparted form : the vital union of the two is Beauty in some 
department of assthetics. In sculpture, painting, music and 
poetry, the material is the stone, the color, the sound, and the 
language ; the form is the soul's conception of the fair or great : 
their combination constitutes all the immortalities of Phidias 
and Raphael, of Mozart and of Milton. 

Wherever you have a substance capable of being made sub- 
ject to the forms which feeling paints upon the understanding, 
you have scope for a fine art. The life of man, then, is the 
greatest of the Fine Arts. The stuff that it is wrought of, is 
the condition, acts, and circumstances of humanity. The in- 
stinctive efforts of each person to cut or mould these into shapes 
conceived by his own Ambition, Vanity, or Love of Pleasure, 
give us a work of art ; sometimes magnificent, and sometimes 
ridiculous ; brilliant or burlesque ; fine or fantastic ; wonderful 
or worthless ; in most cases a simple failure ; in the greatest 
instances, a melancholy torso. 

The current of Things flows ever on toward the throne of 
God : man's being is an element cast in to take or make its 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 421 

fate : the man of perceptions, who is the philosopher, arranges 
his feelings according to the laws which he sees established, and 
floats with the stream : the man of passions, who is the actor- 
artist, sets his nature traverse to the course of events, endeavor- 
ing to soothe or storm them to his will. This poetry of action, 
this architecture in history, demand a front and force almost 
divine ; for the particles of social life are kept in form by a 
magnetism whose axis is the sceptre of the heavens ; to over- 
come and change that order, the soul of man must be intensely 
charged with power. Nature, more than our will, sets us on this 
desperate enterprise ; for at a certain period of existence. Imagi- 
nation, winged by emotion, assumes a kind of personality distinct 
from ourselves, and whirls us headlong into the lists. For my 
own part, I have not become content to trifle with the airy es- 
sences of thoughts and words, without having first fought with 
the rougher substances of Life, and exhausted in that contest the 
last contingents of Hope. But I have no instructions to impart 
respecting this life-craft. I understand it not : it is to me a 
mystery and a puzzle. My observation has shown me many 
courses that are fatal ; none that are wise. It is to me an inex- 
tricable tangle of contradictoryprinciples and conflicting pur- 
poses ; a system, of which different parts seem to be under the 
jurisdiction of distinct and jealous deities — the constitution of 
man being planned upon one design, its development being 
directed by another, and the end and result of the whole being 
regulated by a third law thwarting both — as also the wise fab- 
ling of the ancients showed in the iiction of the three Fates ; a 
scheme, in which success and failure are but different modes 
of punishment, and good and evil liut varied methods of arriv- 
ing at it — in which nothing is certain but the suffering of man. 
For myself, the glory of my life has proved its bitter perplexity : 
when I touched the glittering prize it exploded with ruin and 
amazement. How gorgeous was that conflagration of the Feel- 
ings, which in youth wrapped the battlements of life in splendor, 
to leave them in ashes ! How wild, that swelling strength that 
then sprang forth in insolence of power, to win the terrible 
defeats of victory, and reap that cureless disappointment which 
36 



422 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

lies in the success of the passions ! Never to have tasted Joy, 
is a privation"; to have commanded all its resources, is the sad- 
dest of human calamities. The failures of Love are bitter; but 
triumph is the most hopeless of them. A stout mind endures 
repulse, and even is strengthened by it ; but from the moral 
overthrow of boundless gratification, there is no re-action. 
Talis frangit fortia corcla dolor. The pleasure-tides of Hope 
have ebbed away, and return to me no more : thrown high upon 
the beach, I lie amid the wrecks and rubbish of old and ruined 
schemes. From the profession of life-artist, therefore, I have 
retired, having totally failed in it. But, alas ! it will not give 
up its liens upon me. By the keen enjoyments of earlier being, 
I have provoked the animosities of Pain, which seems, with mad 
resentment, to take its revenge on a nature which had defied it, 
by stinging it through madness into insensibility — and have 
accumulated upon the hours of thought, an agony beneath whose 
weight the darkened mind reels. The passions need no scourg- 
ings but their own. Intense delights, even of the purest kind, 
seem to be a kind of sin against the moderation of nature ; and 
the recollection of them is a species of Remorse, which, like a 
deadly arrow from the quiver of the great hunter, Nemesis, 
drinks from the side of its victim, drop by drop, the streams of 
life. From tht delirium of that passionate influence which 
maddens to emasculate, we wake in weakness and anguish; and 
can only utter the wild, hopeless cry of Atys — "Jam, jam dolet 
quod egi, jam, jamque poenitet!''^ My day, then, being ended, 
let me creep into the cave of Death, and lie snugly housed there, 
while the flying troops of Existence sweep to and fro over my 
head. 

But thought survives when the Passions have been slain ; and 
from its depths, creations divinely delicate, yet dauntless in en- 
durance, may still be made to give themselves forth. Those 
exquisite porcelain moulds of poetic fancy, which, when pressed 
upon the rude matter of actual life, were shattered into frag- 
ments, may here impart their loveliness of form to essences as 
fine as light. The pride that was lost by Action, may be reco- 
vered in Art. 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 423 

Literary art is the chief subject of our present concern ; let 
us understand its nature and development. JEsthetic power, I 
have said, consists in a certain harmony and conjoint action of 
the affective faculties with the intellectual : but this union con- 
stitutes the Sentiments, which, therefore, are the creative ele- 
ments in our nature. Phrenology recognizes this triple division 
of our mental organization ; assigning the passions to the rear 
and base of the brain, the intellect to the forehead, and the sen- 
timents to the central parts between them : and beyond this 
grouping, the classifications of that science are hardly to be 
relied on. Sympathy with the merely physical emotions may so 
predominate in a literary work, that it shall not rise to the cha- 
racter of art at all.* On the other hand, the reaction of the 
intellectual element may be so strong, that the production passes 
quite out of the region of genuine art, into the thinner air of 
metaphysics : it is in the due proportion of the two that the 
perfectness of art consists. The mistake of approving the for- 
mer of these conditions, is not common or lasting ; the impos- 
ture, indeed, could never take effect, but in an age when the mob 
are the arbiters of reputation ; who, imagining that they are 
raised to the level of literature, when in truth literature is let 
down to their level, are of course delighted with productions 
which they know how to appreciate. But the latter evil, as an 
error in opinion, and a fault in practice, is in modern times 
nearly universal ; and in view of this, it can hardly be too often 
or too strongly insisted that the sensuous quality is the true 
and peculiar characteristic of art. According to my view of it, 
art is nothing else than an intellectual image of passion : it is 
passion, so far abstracted as, without parting from its own es- 
sence, to assume a mental form ; or, it is a rational conception 
made concrete and palpable in something which addresses itself 
to that part of our nature which is not purely intellectual. It is 
a creation ; and the affective energies, whether for re-production 

■••■ To this class, I refer the writings of Dickens, Sue, Ac. Their power over 
every one that reads them, is intense and irresistible ; but it is impossible to 
treat them as works of art. Whoever admired an execution ? Who but is 
fearfully interented by one ? 



424 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

or for new production, are the creative in man, the others hav- 
ing capacity of perception, selection, and repression, not of 
generation : — it is a thing of power ; and the more physical 
qualities being the more sympathetic, must enter into every 
thing which is to have power over men : — it is not notional, like 
science, but is substantial, and must be wrought of those con- 
stituents which are the most material in our intelligent nature. 

We see from this how large a part the consideration of Lan- 
guage must have in our conceptions of Art. It is no part of 
science ; it is of the essence of art — it is its hypostasis. Science 
is the separate action of the intellect, which is merely analytic. 
Art is the heroic offspring which is engendered when the divinity 
of mind embraces with the human voluptuousness of passion : it 
is the magnetic energy that is evolved when intellect and feeling 
re-act on one another in all the power of their mystic co-re- 
lation. The first and most natural shape in which artistic action 
within man's nature gives itself forth, is gesture and motion, 
which, therefore, might be called the earliest and simplest of the 
fine arts. Sound, likewise, is a natural menstrum of artistic 
spirit. When the constructive instinct predominates among the 
feelings. Architecture is the form in which Beafaty is born of the 
marriage of the mental with the material. Language is the 
highest and most general of all the modes of utterance. In its 
first and true nature, it is less an expression than an emanation 
— a natural effect of this dynamic condition of the faculties — a 
gesture, as it were, produced by the struggle of instinct and in- 
telligence, and propagated through the organs of speech. As 
passion predominates in that state of relation between the dif- 
ferent parts of our being from which language proceeds, it is ob- 
vious that the language will be picturesque and musical in its 
character, concrete and definite, material, a-glow with sensuous 
life : as intellect gains head in the combination, and language 
grows to be less the spontaneous overflow of emotion than the 
ductile expression of the thoughts, it becomes abstract, specula- 
tive, thin and dry. In the language of the poet, then, you read 
the degrees in which the affective and the intellectual, respect- 
ively, have contributed to his work; in otlier words, the degree 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 425 

ill which his work is truly Art. The censure of language is, 
therefore, a criticism upon the genius : when you judge the style, 
you are analyzing the mind. Language is the clothing of science, 
it is the organization of art ; it serves the former for intercourse 
with the world, it is the life and being of the other. 

The sentiments, blended of passion and intelligence, the true 
seat of creative vigor, have, in like manner, a triple division ; 
they are the moral, the spiritual, and the merely natural ; so dis- 
tinct from one another as almost to be opposed ; in the develop- 
ment of all which consists the civility of the race. In the great 
work of effecting this civility, the task of educating the moral 
sentiments was assigned to the Romans ; of the spiritual to the 
Hebrews ; of those which I have called natural, to the Greeks : 
and in the literature of these three nations, you have the same 
phenomena of life and man exhibited under the natural point of 
view, under the spiritual, and under the moral. These natural 
sentiments acting cesthetically, result in the conception of the 
Beautiful ; and their display in the Greek organization took 
place under the conditions of an immense intellectual develop- 
ment, a very limited moral one, and little or nothing of spiritual 
perception : Greek art, then, embodies natural emotions with a 
most exquisite fineness of illustration, and presents a most subtle 
analysis of the natural sensibilities, but is unplagued by moral 
questionings, or the morbid apprehensions of spiritual conscious- 
ness. That predominance of the moral faculties, which evolved, 
in the Eoman state, the greatest system of law, society, and 
politics that the ancient world had seen, while it condemned the 
Latins to rather a debased species of art, led them to the in- 
vention of one form of poetry unknown to the Greeks, that of 
moral satire. In the Hebrew organization we behold an enor- 
mous excess of the spiritual functions with a very defective 
moral faculty, and even a mean intellectual ability : passion, 
therefore, overmastering reason in the composition of their 
poetry, it became the most vehement, substantial, and intense, 
that man has ever produced. These three distinct elements of 
civility flowed into one at the commencement of the Christian 
36* 



42() MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

era ; and modern life and modern art are the mingled action of 
all of them. 

Efflnent from the feelings, tempers and fancies of an humanity 
that claimed no higher origin than the flower-beanng Earth, 
yet inerrant and exact as geometry itself — combining the freedom 
of nature in the conception of thoughts with the precision of 
scienc.e in the expression of them — ^infinitely refined in its sym- 
pathies, yet simple, strong and never offering at any thing false 
or unsound — sensitive, with an equal fidelity, to the most mate- 
rial instincts that inhabit the depths of our nature, and the 
airyest gleams of emotion that flit over its surface, and sovereign, 
with equal ease, to summon them to become the eternal, life- 
giving spirits of some fair form of words — searching every thing 
with the lights of philosophy, that it may decorate every thing 
with the lustre of beauty — subduing passion to the yoke of logic, 
and giving to pure reason almost the warmth and loveliness of 
feeling — able, by the telescopic powers of its language, to ad- 
vance the indefinite into distinctness, and to make reality recede 
away into a vagueness as dim as air — intense, yet expansive, 
comprehensive and yet particular, fervid without faultiness, glow- 
ing and still controlled, natural but refined — daring any thing 
except deformity, fearing nothing but to violate grace, regard- 
less of all laws but those of Beauty — delight of the sense and 
wonder of the mind — Hellenic Art stands on high, like the 
grouped stars of Heaven, at once a superstition, a rapture, and 
a science. The forms of Grecian brightness do not flare and 
blaze like the fires of modern ardor, nor are they, as the priestly 
poetry of Israel, distorted, by the inspiration with which they 
swell ; but, serene and genial, they glow with a native brilliance 
that softens the surrounding atmosphere with the light of joy 
and the warmth of repose. From the quiet of their lofty seats 
they seem to look down upon the rivalries of ostentatious Rome, 
the fanatic furiousness of Judea, the madness of Gothic fervor, 
and to say, " Quare fremuerunt gentes, et populi meditati sunt 
inania ?" That literature is not plagued with those desperate 
"questionings of outward things," that abnormal apprehension 
of things not palpalile and nigh, which has infected our poetry 



yETAT. 27.] MUXOLOGLES AMONG THE MOUNTAIXS. 4-27 

from Jiitlea, uor tormented with tliat analytic temper that will 
not enjoy but moralize, that too profoundly meditative, Roman 
mood, which draws out a bitterness fi'om every pleasure, which 
regrets the Past, or desponds over the Future, instead of exulting 
in the Present. It was this want in the Grecian i^ature, of the 
spiritual and moral sense, that made Grecian art peculiar and 
unimitable : for Art, in the purity of its philosophical conception, 
is essentially a heathen thing ; that is to say, is constituted of 
those carnal apprehensions of the grand, the graceful and the 
fair, whose integrity is impaired by the influence of any thoughts 
not of earth and the present. Glad and innocent as childhood, 
yet, like childhood or summer, ovei'come sometimes in the very 
acme of brightness by a dark cloud whose origin and nature and 
purpose were utterly inexplicable, the Greeks seem to be moving 
about in that paradise of careless, joyous ease, which the world 
was, before the wretched knowledge of good and evil had in- 
vaded it. When I seek for Purity, let me be aided by the suf- 
fering song of David ; but I desire to be all Pagan in my ap- 
preciation of the Beautiful. What relief it is, to turn away from 
the frantic fooleries of theological contests (the vice and shame 
of this age), and from the metaphysical perplexities of recent 
poetry — to the rich and soft repose of Grecian art-^to that 
calmness which is strength and wisdom, that silent grandeur 
which is freedom and peace ! Greek literature ! — delight of my 
boyhood — only friend of my inmost being — ^how should I live 
without it ? Fair Spirit of true art ! pure, beautiful, divine — 
comforter, companion, and enchantress — that in the white dawn 
of Ionian glory, unveiling thy kindling fascinations to mortals, 
didst infuse a love that grew to inspiration ! Thou art delicious, 
to wake affection ; and august, that thou mayst deserve our 
worship. The admiration of thy charms is cleansing ; the in- 
fluence of thy nearness purges our privacies of thought. Over the 
glossy streams that gush from thy sacred mountain is written — 

. . . Piira cuiu vesta vouite, 
Et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam. 

Reigning over our Fancy, thou servest in the cause of virtue : 
for, showing us what marvels: mny l)o accomplished by those 



428 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^.tit. 27. 

who are possessed with the Idea of the Perfect, thou dost incite 
us to mightier and unceasing efforts in the higher aesthesis of 
virtue and goodness. 

Latin art in letters has been underrated by critics from not 
being well understood. It is not that, being of one nature with 
Greek art, it is inferior to it in quality ; in its elements and pur- 
poses it is essentially different. It is not composed of those 
merely physical sentiments which Attic genius sought indeed to 
elevate, but not to modify ; it does not seek for a pure and purged 
apprehension of natural beauty : it has a conscience — which 
Greece never knew. It is fashioned of the moral instincts and 
sympathies ; and if any one would behold these, under their 
various development of personal dignity, domestic affection 
social regard, and political relation, embodied in strong and 
graceful forms of feeling, fancy, or thought, and arrayed in the 
dazzle of a language full of sensibility, surprisingly suggestive, 
and capable of accomplishing, by a kind of elegant indirectness, 
effects almost as exquisite as the arrowy certainty of Grecian 
phrases — he will find them in their best loveliness in Latin 
poetry. In dealing with this moral species of art, the test of 
artistic merit is the degree in which the work proceeds from the 
moral sentiments and instincts, and not from the dry analysis of 
a moral ratiocination : and under this view, the Latin bards are 
genuine poets. Their craft is as truly art as Grecian is, and their 
mastery of it not inferior : but the more vital clay with which 
they wrought was incapable of those firm, cold, glittering forms 
which shine forever in the Parian stone. 

Idolatry of the classics is part of the religion of a gentleman : 
and, bred as I have been from my father's arms, into the most 
intimate familiarity with Grecian letters, and beholden to them 
inexpressibly for comfort and joy among a thousand troubles, 
and almost for sanity amidst the torrent of false reason and 
base superstition that now sweeps over the world, they are to 
me at once a passion and a pride : they are a refuge from care, 
from fear, from solitude, from remorse ; I turn to them with the 
same confidence and affection with which one seeks his home 
and fireside ; and I feel an assault upon their supremacy as a 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 439 

wrong done to myself. And yet — reluctantly — against my will. — 
in spite of earnest endeavor — I am overborne by the despotizing 
might of Jewish inspirations, and am compelled to admit that 
Israel is greater than Greece. Bowed down and driven away 
from the darlings of heathen witchery, by an irresistible sym- 
pathy, I recognize at last that there is in art something yet higher 
than Beauty, and that there may be a power in Spirit above the 
fascinations of Form. And whence is this superior vigor — this 
amazing vehemence and vitality of Jewish art — this fervor of 
enthusiasm, whose words are weapons, whose cadences are like 
the thick drivings of the tempest ? It is because the spiritual 
instincts and sensibilities, of which Hebrew poetry is the bold, 
imperious utterance, are yet deeper, more impetuous and absolute 
than either of the other kinds ; as the experience of the world 
attests. The spiritual, the natural, the moral — such is the suc- 
cessive development in the history of the individual, and such is 
the order in which the several civilities of Judea, Greece and 
Home have evolved themselves : that is the sequence as you 
pass forward from the merely affective to the intellectual organs, 
and that is the gradation in the degrees of force and substanti- 
ality exhibited by these respective schools of art. Fit to be the 
winged messenger of that tremendous law which was born amidst 
thunderings and lightnings — whose fearful courts are held in the 
shadowy sanctuaries of the soul, and the ministers of whose 
judgment are Frenzy, and Horror, and Self-damnation — it flies 
forth in the solemnity of a delegated Omnipotence : by the force 
of its sincerity, extravagance ))ecomes venerable and absurdity 
august. Hebrew literature is the fresh, morning effort of that 
deity in man whose calmer work is Grecian art, and whose later 
toil is Roman. It is the native residence of the sublime. Grecian 
sentiment, never soai'ing without the jealous accompaniment of 
Grecian intellect, could never reach Sublimity, but, like Aurora 
in pursuit of Night, still drove the dusky fugitive before it. Of 
range unlimited — defiant of the graceful shackles of Greek 
decorum — flashing like the lightning from pole to pole in wan- 
tonness of might and freedom, it sounds mth equal energy the 
highest and the lowest notes of mortal consciousness ; from the 



430 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [.^.tat. 27. 

physical sympathies of the mere animal who warraeth himself 
and crieth "Ha, ha! I am warm!" to the infinite delicacy of 
spiritual being which to an Idea says, " Thou art a place to hide 
me in." It gives vitality to matter, and form and action to the 
subtlest phenomena of mind and soul. In its harmonies Ocean 
claps its hands, and corn-fields laugh and sing. Among all the 
deep minds of Greece there is none that may be measured with 
the unfathomed soul of David. The storms of the Andes have 
no tones more terrible — the melodies of the summer winds among 
groves of myrtle and orange are not more ravishing — than those 
that mingle in the bursts of his lyre. From the recesses of his 
spirit, there seems to surge forth a stream which is but the tiding 
overflow of the sea of Heaven. With the roar of a coming de- 
luge, headlong it rushed over the world — a resistless stream of 
Light, and Power, and Glory — absorbing the confluent courses 
of Greek intelligence and Roman morals. It rolled on in unre- 
sisted conquest, till it met the great refluent wave of Milton's 
soul, which, with audacity and strength divine, forced back the 
gathered torrent even till the returning tide echoed against the 
throne of God. 



No. IV. 

The splendor and blaze of summer are in the sky ! Afar, 
and faint, her yellow banners float, flame-like, through the blue 
ether : nearer, the air, thrilled into voice by the warm touches 
of the light, gives forth her iris-like melodies in breezy sighs 
of pleasure : while around and beneath, upon an hundred hills, 
the thick forests stand, like emerald cressets streaming towards 
the Heavens. It is the passioning of Nature. Wild, fervid, 
fiercely-voluptuous, as youth's first, full embrace with guilt, — 
the spirits of Earth and Sky glow together into an union, in- 
tense as fire and glorious as Sin. We dwell to-day beneath 
the tyranny of Light, and in the very porches of the Sun. The 
lustre is vehement, almost to gloom. Swelling in crested 
strength, — travailing with conscious boundlessness of Yigor, — 



iETAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 431 

Existence seems about to be self-born into some higher and more 
emphatic type of being. In earlier clays, this was the season 
of my deepest joys. There was something in its godless glow 
that fascinated me. The Arab-soul of youth, — half-savage in 
its love of freedom, — craving sensation, — struck and enchanted 
by Power, — revelled in the raging of the Summer's ray. Lover 
and worshipper of the Sun, the sting of his heat smote strength 
into my frame ; I exulted in the dazzling deluge of his beams. 
Through the madness of the mortal energies, the sympathies of 
the deep soul were reached and roused. But that delight is over ; 
the might of spirit whence it was engendered has been struck 
forever. And I regret not their [MS. wanting.] Rather, I 
say in daily thanksgiving. Blessed be God for the infirmity of 
our Nature. Betrayed by Strength, and ruined by Joy, redemp- 
tion cometh to us at last through our weakness and sufferings. 
It is that lingering residue of distress and cowardice, wliich still 
will haunt our hours of Pride, and soil our brightest raptures, 
that becomes our strength and salvation. That is the con- 
sciousness of our Immortality, which, reproducing itself within 
our finite life, compels our inverted being to right itself, through 
madness and misery. In worldly schemes and action, we mistake 
our nature, and perplex our fate : for we have inherited a portion 
of that high angel essence, whose greatness is in humility, whose 
only comfort is in the consciousness of Duty ; whose energy is 
convulsed by selfishness and its sight extinguished by [MS. 
wanting.] Our shame is our Dignity ; our force is in our fears. 
It is our failures that save us. For myself, desolate, but not in 
despair ; I send on high the earnest breath of gratitude, for this 
chiefly : that amidst the ecstasies of Sin, I never could escape 
the exquisite sense of its degradation ; that, sated with raptures, 
I could not harden myself into contentment : but that the living 
consciousness of a better destiny, growing more intolerably keen 
within my bosom at each lower step in the descent, whirled me 
at last with the volcanic strength of frenzy into the regions of 
an exulting penitence. Wild with love and anguish, mad with 
enjoyment and remorse, my soul tore itself away from the warm 
oppressions of its pleasures, to tell its misery to the mountains 



432 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

and the silent skies, to the lonely forests and the stars of Night. 
Nature is still, as she ever was, my refuge, my restorer and sup- 
port : but it is her sterner, chaster aspects that I now take [MS. 
wanting] in, — her ruder lineaments, her suffering moods, — 
those rigorous scenes and times, that, repelling sense, urge forth 
the Spirit. Alone and tlioughtful, — with regrets to urge and 
hopes to guide me upwards, — I dwell amongst the grandeur of 
the hills, — the varying clouds for Memory and the changeless sky 
for Faith, — sending on high the eternal aspiration after good ; — 
my feelings my only friends, the higher sorts of poetry, my 
companion and teacher. — But we forget our purpose, amid these 
reveries. Our business is with criticism. Having distinguished 
the kinds of ancient Art, let us sketch the outline of its cha- 
racter as displayed in modern Europe. 

Civility, as I have said, consists in the development of the 
sentiments : if you compare a savage with a civilized person, 
you will see that the difference between them lies not in the 
passions, which are quite the same in both, nor in the mere in- 
tellect, which may be more piercing in the savage, — but in the 
sentiments, which are the offspring of their combination. Jew- 
ish, Greek, and Roman society exhibit three several kinds of 
civility, each of them partial ; one, spiritual, another a3sthetic, 
and the third, moral. To bring them into union, — to lead forth 
a family of nations in which all these elements should be com- 
bined in one grand and harmonious civility, was the problem 
which Nature proposed to herself in modern history. During 
the fourteen first centuries of our era, the object of her efforts was 
the moral and spiritual education of a race of glorious barbarians ; 
and the machines by which it was accomplished, were the feudal 
Law-system, and the Church. Those who correctly appreciate 
the effective purpose of those two great institutions, can never 
cease to admire the wisdom which their organization exhibits, 
and the priceless excellence of their beneficent results. Being 
designed to operate upon a human nature grossly full of vices 
and defects, they were of course adapted to it ; and some have 
erringly supposed them to have been the causes of faults which 
they harmonized with, only that they might remove them. 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONU TllPJ MOUNTAINS. 433 

Others have misapprehended- the value of these systems, because 
they have looked for intellectual results from schemes designed 
to produce only spiritual and moral ones. That deep and, as it 
now seems, ineradicable moral intelligence and spiritual con- 
sciousness, which give character to modern Europe, are noth- 
ing else than the effect of ages of discipline by the feudal 
and Catholic systems : they are now the birth-right, and spon- 
taneous faculties, of every individual ; but he who imagines that 
these perceptions and feelings are strictly natural in man, for- 
gets that Greece had no spirituality, and that Judea possessed 
scarcely more of that social and moral instinct or sagacity, 
which all Europeans now are born with. When these two 
great systems had done their work of educating the race into an 
enlightenment beyond their own measure, and had thus become 
useless and contemptible to man, they gave way, and perished 
with different degrees of suddenness in different nations ; and 
the intellectual or scientific faculties, covering the Eesthetic 
energies in their sortie, rose forth upon the world, like a new 
dawn upon the full day. Bacon and Shakspeare were contem- 
poraries, — the Sun of science which lightens all the world, — the 
Sirius of poetry, around whom all the stars of Art revolve. 
Galileo and Dante, Vico and Milton, flourished at the same 
time. Since that epoch, the task which society had been en- 
gaged in, is the intellectual civility of men. 

The characteristics of Jewish, Greek, and Latin art, are each 
single and uniform : the peculiarity of modern Art is, that all 
these are blended together and interfused, like the gorgeous 
colorings of a forest in autumn. In English poetry, what rich 
varieties of form, what infinite diversities of effect ! There is 
Chaucer, who is a Greek poet : and Milton, who is a Hebrew 
poet : and Pope, who is a Latin poet : and Shakspeare, who is 
a World poet. 

It is impossible to make any progress in the philosophy of 
aesthetical criticism, without recognizing that there are these three 
distinct kinds of Art, founded in distinctions inherent in the 
nature of man, and illustrated historically by the three great 
nations of antiquity to which we have referred. They may 
37 



434 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

differ in the degrees of their power and beauty ; but one is as 
genuine as another. It may well happen that a man, by reason 
of the predominance of one set of sentiments on his nature, is 
fitted to sympathize with one of these kinds of poetry, to the 
exclusion of the others ; but if he cannot enjoy the rest, he 
should at least endeavor to appreciate them, for the limits of 
one's taste ought not to be made the measure of one's judg- 
ments. If we group the English poets according to an histo- 
rical law, we shall find, perhaps, — though, of course, in a very 
general way, and liable to disturbance by very slight causes, — 
that the earliest English poets are of a Heathen or Greek family 
of art ; the middle ones of a moral cast ; that the spiritual predo- 
minates in those most eminent in our own day. Now, critics, 
who are familiar chiefly with these more recent models, and have 
schooled their taste and informed their understanding by their 
examples, fall into the error of imagining that the spiritual con- 
sciousness is the very faculty of poetry, and that the mystery 
and power of art can consist in nothing else ; forgetting that 
there are three Graces, and that though we may love one, we 
should be wise enough not to deny the others. It is thus that 
there has been constructed a school of criticism, very limitary 
and insular in its sympathies, and, on that account, morbid in its 
tastes; a school whose canons would, on the one hand, consign 
Homer himself to neglect, and set Euripides above ^schylus ; 
and on the other, push Horace and Virgil quite out of the line 
of poets. All these narrownesses are very unphilosophical : 
Wordsworth is undoubtedly a poet ; but it does not follow that 
Campbell is not as great a one ; and Pope greater than either. 
The summit of Ida is triple. 

In passing the great poets of England in hasty review, we 
shall distribute them according to the three several styles which 
we have recognized, though of course that classification is ex- 
tremely far from rigorous ; indicating only that the Greek, the 
Roman or the Jewish spirit predominates, not that it is exclu- 
sive. But first we should speak of two who certainly cannot be 
referred to one class more than to another ; one of them belong- 
ing equally to all, the other being different from any ; I mean 



^TAT. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 435 

Shakspeare and Spenser. Shakspeare is, I grant, " the divine, 
the matchless, what you will :" yet Spenser is that poet, of all 
modern times, in whom the spiritual, the moral, and the natural, 
combine in the most exquisite justness of proportion, and result 
in an absolute unity of effect; composing one divine faculty, 
constituted of three, yet distinct and entire. In Shakspeare, 
these three join, but do not unite. He is not a triple one, he is 
three. In his plays, three separate intelligences seem to execute 
different parts of the work; sometimes, it must be admitted, 
in a diversity of manner not very promotive of the harmony of 
art. In one scene, I behold before me the re-arisen spirit of 
the most wonderful, the most delightful of the Grecian drama- 
tists, — Aristophanes ; in other parts, I listen to a mind in- 
structed in all the lore of Cicero and breathing all the dignity 
of Cato : while beneath and beyond both of these, thei*e are 
sometimes gleams and sometimes lightnings of that lurid fire 
of the infinite, under-lying life, and disturbing it now with un- 
easy tremblings, and now with volcanic overthrow : but so se- 
parated, and even discordant, in their characteristics, are these 
three creative emanations, that I lose the sense of the identity 
of their origin. His genius was boundless in comprehension, 
but it was not homogeneous, and it was not proportioned. 
Spenser, — expansive yet harmonious as the spheres, — gracefully 
uniform amidst limitless extension,- — rich as autumn and freshly 
various as the spring, — is the faultless exemplar of Gothic art. 

First and greatest of the bright-eyed band that wear the 
golden grasshopper in the bonnet, is cheerful old Chaucer. To 
no poet in the world, may he be named as second. GeniaT, exu- 
berant and changeful,. — like the abounding Dawn, his spirit dif- 
fused itself over existence, coloring nature into fresh, peculiar 
splendor, and waking life to animation and delight. Possest of 
a quick, true eye for the picturesque, both in scenery and in so- 
ciety, which he reproduces in his verse, not by sketching im- 
pressions, or indicating general effects, but by means of parti- 
cular traits, caught through minute observation, and conveyed 
in language, precise, simple and lustrous : instinct with that 
true poet-spirit, which, instant to seize and faithful to record 



436 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

every suggestion of the infinite which the mortal teems with, 
sees in the actual the best materials of the ideal : full of that 
efflorescent energy of Fancy which causes every seed of thought 
and observation which falls within it to bloom into vital beauty, 
— that artless propriety of sentiment " qui ne sail ce qu'ellefait, 
et fait tout avec grace, qui ne sait ce qu'elle dit, et dit tout 
avec esprif'' — of that classic restrained vigor, that is at once 
voluptuous and pure : brilliant yet delicate in his tints, exact 
but free in his touches, natural but exquisitely finished in man- 
ner, concise but easy in expression : flowing forth in strains of 
melody, free, rich, and ceaseless as a summer brook, which no 
familiarity can render tiresome, and no perversity make discord- 
ant. Fashioning-his work with a severe correctness, and then 
shedding over it those alchymic hues of pleasure which turn all 
things to golden grace, this enchanting minstrel presents us 
with images at once accurate and glorious, and processes at the 
same time logical and delightful, — the elements of Truth under 
the outlines of Beauty. Never was Art made more delicious. 
Able to embody the most profound moral conceptions in ima- 
ginative forms of surpassing grandeur, force and terror, yet 
liking to enjoy more than to create ; teeming with invention, 
and yet preferring to observe rather than contrive ; his greatest 
enterprises of strength are accomplished without effort, and his 
longest excursions wear no appearances of fatigue. His sym- 
pathy with humanity is as widely-ranging and as fine as his love 
of nature is eager and joyous : easily capable of constructing 
brilliant air-palaces of the purest Fancy, as in that immortal 
fragment of Kambus-Khau, which of all Chaucer's productions 
seems to have left the strongest impression upon Milton's feel- 
ings, he seems always to feel that the rightful dwelling-place 
and employment of his thoughts, was amid objects and social 
interests : specially master of the pathetic, and knowing his 
mastery, yet never displaying his power at the expense of his 
art, not pressing sympathy into pain, but thoughtful and digni- 
fied even amidst the impetuosities of feeling, operating not by a 
blind aggregation of emotions, but by distinct and well-analyzed 
strokes, to which a craving sensibility could add little and an 



jEtat. 27.] MONOLOGUES AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 43^ 

exacting taste object nothing, exhibiting the reserved, sup- 
pressed intensity of Euripides, and not that wild and morbid 
abandonment to distress into which Virgil and Catullus fell 
when they sought to emulate the energy and earnestness of Ion- 
ian passion : a perfect artist, not Gothic, to sublimate reality 
away into the indistinctness of the heavens, but Greek, to bring 
down the golden atmosphere of the skies to shed magic radiance 
around the familiar and the near : seemingly discursive but really 
direct : the last inheritor of that Homeric secret of elevating 
without distorting, and transfiguring without change. 

[The rest of these MSS., which were several in number, are 
lost : what follows is a mere lead-pencil fragment, but belonging 
apparently to the same subject, is here added.] 

Pope for the moral poets : eulogize him as working with 
moral sentiments, and even in Abelard to Eloise moral pas- 
sions : not trains of ratiocination ; not metaphysical : Jeflrey 
and Allison. We might name Wordsworth as the person in 
whom the spiritual develops itself more exclusively than in any 
other poet : he has little of moral sentiment as distinguished 
from spiritual, and mere natural sympathy — the [MS. wanting]... 
in him, though delicate and true, is feeble. Of the capacity of 
the spiritual to constitute a great and powerful poetry, no man 
that has read the Psalms of David can entertain any doubt ; yet 
Wordsworth, I think, falls far short of being a great poet. The 
intellectual predominates far too excessively, and physical emo- 
tion is far too weak in his mental constitution to give him that 
mastery of human sympathies which is the wand of the poet. 
Exquisite in apprehension, subtle in discrimination, the pure 
stream of refined emotion winds around the forms of nature and 
the exterior of life : its passages are not forced through by its 
own resistless violence, but are opened before it by the antece- 
dent analysis of the intellect. If any man would know the 
difference between a speculation and a creation — between a 
thought and a thing — let him pass from the rarified and fatigu- 
ing tenuity of the Excursion to the [MS. wanting.] The metal 
which he works upon is the genuine stone of Ophir, — nay, if 
you please, it is the refined, essential gold of the heavenly throne ; 
37* 



438 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. [^tat. 27. 

it is the quantity that is defective. The economy of the poet is 
truly amazing to behold. It is Jaeaten out past any analogy 
with the leaf of the gold-beater, into an infinitesimal degree of 
fineness : when, occasionally, it is massed into a point of visible 
magnitude, that point is as bright in purity of essential lustre as 
the very lamps of the sky. His organization is defective in 
tone,. — in capacity to re-act with vigor and efi"ect on the objects 
of its apprehension — in that muscular energy and force which 
moulds and masters and gives form. When he approaches a 
great subject, instead of being fired and raised and maddened 
by it, he is paralyzed, and his faculties are thrown into a state 
of mere collapse. He possesses a fancy susceptible of the forms 
of grand and lovely images ; it is the force of creative energy 
that is so marvellously lacking. His Greek odes — as Dion, 
Laodamia — are cast in the genuine mould of Euripides : but 
they are the hollow shells of exquisite sculpture not solid 
masses of [MS. wanting.] 



DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. 



MR. MACREADY. 



That portion of the community to whose cares, or whose 
more fatiguing want of them, the drama is wont to prove a 
nightly solace, will be gratified by the intelligence, now rendered 
certain, of Mr. Macready's appearance in this country early in the 
coming autumn. His reception, we well know, will be cordial 
and cheering. By the delicacy of his social deportment — by the 
dignity of his public aims, and the studious ability with which 
he has devoted himself to the life-long labor of realizing the 
loftiest conception of a dramatic career, he has secured a more 
honorable place in the confidence of the best classes of our com- 
munity — the educated, the reflective, the refined — than any 
foreign performer who has ever come among us. These persons 
are happy to hail his arrival, as a gentleman who brings to 
private intercourse the most select contributions of taste and 
scholarship, and as an artist who displays on the scene of his 
peculiar distinction, an intellectual capacity which elevates him 
to the level of the great philosophical critics and analysts of 
Shakspearian life. While he has raised himself to an enviable 
respectability by the decorum of his personal demeanor, he has 
raised his profession in the scale of mental consideration by the 
superiority of thoughtful power which he brings to bear upon its 
most exalted difficulties. The present impression produced by 
other actors — we allude only to the very first order of them — 
may perhaps have been more intense ; the sympathy of the pas- 
sions under Kean or Cooke may have been more vivid and ab- 

(439) 



440 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^:tat. 29. 

sorbing ; but we have met with no player upon whose exhibitions 
we reflect with deeper rational interest and satisfaction than Mr. 
Macready. We viewed them with a confused and indistinct 
tumult of emotions which subsided when the occasion had past, 
and left nothing behind it but the memory of a physical excite- 
ment. We recall Ms great illustrations as having been the 
means of giving us a grander impression even of the genius of 
Shakspeare himself — as having been memorable revelations of 
the mind of the immortal contriver of characters which Nature 
might mistake for her own noblest creations — as being gilded 
with some rays of that admiration which glitters forever around 
the bard whom he interprets. It is in his relation to these vast 
and weighty monuments of histrionic fame — the tragedies of 
Shakspeare. — that we consider Mr. Macready 's name as specially 
distinguished ; and we hope that it is this matchless scene that 
will be illuminated by the last splendors of his art that go forth 
upon American soil. We would suggest to him, as a thing 
woithy of his own position and eminently grateful to his friends, 
that he should give in each great city of the Union a complete 
series of his Shaksperian personations, in regular sequence. Let 
him close his engagement in America by that full diapason of 
})rofessional display. 

From the time that we first grew acquainted with the mei'its 
of this profound illustrator of the drama, we have cherished his 
reputation with something of enthusiasm. We have read, since 
then, many depreciating criticisms — many effusions of faint and 
partial praise ; but our conviction of the justice of our own 
earliest impressions, and of the genuine worth of the subject of 
them, has remained unshaken. The vivid effects of the scenes, 
under his control, we are told, are but an elaborate and compli- 
cated mechanism ; all is fore-planned and settled with minute 
and measured particularity ; what seems the rapid improvisation 
of passion, is the deliberate result of calculation and arrange- 
ment. So be it : but what, then, shall we think of the capacities 
which contrive, combine and manage this intricate system of dis- 
play ? How can we sufficiently admire the invention which con- 
ceives, the vigor which executes, and the taste which controls 



-Etat. 29.] xMR. M ACRE AD Y. 441 

these alleged dynamics of the drama ? Admit that the result 
attained by Mr. Macready is as effective as that reached by artists 
of less laborious skill — a position which we cannot allow to be 
at all questionable — is it not obvious that the methods ascribed 
to the former as the means of his success imply far more than 
all the abilities which are possessed by the others ? — as much 
genius and a greater measure of discipline and accomplishments ? 
The imaginative sensibility which, in the quietness of the re- 
hearsal, apprehends the impressions Avhich are to be worked out 
with careful exactness in the exhibition, is surely the same with 
that which moves the performer whose action is spontaneous in 
the presence of the audience. In addition to all this, the sus- 
tained strength which carries out, through a series of arrange- 
ments, all the spirit of the first conception ; the tact, the judg- 
ment, the delicacy of execution which must preside over the 
whole ; the energy which, in the final moment of delivery, must 
vivify the performance with the freshness of an impulsive move- 
ment ; all these call for new admiration and distinct honors. Is 
there not as much inspired invention in the complex construction 
of a piece of clockwork as is displayed by him who, by a glance 
at the sun, or a felicitous guess from the shadows, tells you the 
hour of the day ? If the elaboration imputed to Mr. Macready 
be really undergone by him, it only proves that he is a man of 
consummate genius, who preestablishes such a system of ope- 
rations that the conceptions of his genius cannot fail to take 
effect with exact and absolute precision. In truth, the habits 
alleged as a derogation from the fame of this great tragedian, 
would be quite indispensable to make out the highest titles to 
it. Wherever we can penetrate into the interior system of men 
of the fii'st greatness in any department, we find that the anxious 
employment of instruments and aids of success is not less striking 
than the richness of those native resources that might well seem 
able to do without them. It is a secondary ambition which is 
content to rely upon the unassisted suggestions of the mind or 
feelings. Napoleon was accustomed to make the most copious 
and thorough preparations for his enterprises ; he provided for 
every possible want ; he anticipated every rational contingency ; 



442 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [Mtat. 30. 

and when success had thus been reduced to demonstration and 
victory rendered a logical necessity, he talked about his destiny, 
and bade men marvel at the might of his genius. 

After all, the merit of an artist of any kind, is to be judged 
by the excellence of the final result which he accomplishes ; and 
certainly no personation, that we have witnessed, informs the great 
drama of Shakspeare with a nobler life, or makes its colossal cha- 
racters flash forth a higher and truer splendor of moral revela- 
tion, than the histrionic efforts of Mr. Macready. He does not 
possess the fascinations of countenance — the witcheries of tone 
— the graceful charm of captivating manner ; he may not enchant 
the senses by qualities half physical in their nature. He is the 
actor of intellect. He plays to the mind of the spectator. He 
begins by fixing the curiosity of the understanding keenly upon 
the inward condition of the character he is dealing with, and 
then leads the passions on in unbreathing suspense through a 
progression of scenic power in which the acuteness of the meta- 
physician subserves the brilliance of the artist, until the blaze of 
the denouement flashes back over the whole the conviction of 
reason and the satisfaction of the conscience. We have seen no 
artist of the drama who infuses into his exhibitions such poig- 
nancy of mental interest. It is that intimate union of the ra- 
tional with the sensuous in his performance that gives such in- 
tensity of gratification to the most reflective among his auditors. 
He holds the sympathy of the lowest, while he commands and 
sways the admiring respect of the best cultivated. We may 
witness in other performers occasional displays of greater 
power — outbursts of startling but irregular force — it will be 
long ere we shall behold, in any one, a higher tone of classic 
dignity, a more continuous grandeur of moral impression, than is 
shown in the best personations of Mr. Macready. 



MR. MACREADY 'S MACBETH. 

It is evident that a deep impression has been produced by 
the Macbeth of Mr. Macready, and that the interest of the 



^TAT. 30.] MR. MACREADY. 443 

audience has been powerfully engaged ; but probably most 
people would feel themselves somewhat at a loss, if called upon, 
to say seriously what has been the cause of this undefinable de- 
light, and wherein lay the secret of this fascination. 

When we first saw this great actor, during the two first acts, 
we did not know exactly what to think of him ; we could not 
make up our mind. It was obvious, that here was a scheme 
and style of acting essentially different from any thing we had 
seen before. The actor was very clearly contemplating a differ- 
ent purpose from other actors, and employing different means 
thereto ; but what his system was, and how his excellence should 
be characterized, was something of a puzzle. As the piece 
went on, the prospect cleared, and we left the house at the end 
of the play, with the consciousness of having been as strangely 
affected, and as intensely delighted as we had ever been in our 
lives. 

That which we had in our mind, throughout, as the key to 
Mr. Macready's design, was Charles Lamb's essay " On the 
Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their 
fitness for stage representation." In that paper, the acutest 
critic of our times ventures upon saying, that Shakspeaje's plays 
are those which, of all others, are the least fitted for perform- 
ance, because the chief interest of Shakspeare's persons lies in 
the mind, and the workings of the mind of those persons ; 
whereas, what we see upon the stage, is body and bodily action. 
That which Lamb thus considered to be the grand peculiarity 
of Shakspeare, and which he supposed it was the nature of act- 
ing to leave out, it has been Mr. Macready's purpose to seize 
upon and to portray ; — ^to display before you the soul and 
mind of the person, as it was conceived by Shakspeare, — not 
simply to pronounce each speech with that effectiveness of voice 
and attitude that might best attend those words considered by 
themselves, but to reveal the moral clockwork of the feelings 
which resulted in striking out that speech from the depths of 
the speaker's heart. From the beginning, it was the individual, 
moral nature of the royal homicide which was bared to view, 
and upon which our attention was riveted, and to trace that 



444 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^tat. 30. 

moral nature through all its changes and declension — to follow 
it through all the complexity of the passions — to see that those 
lusts of the mind which are at the beginning spirits to animate, 
are afterward furies to punish — to mark how a noble nature is 
first convulsed and then hardened by the consciousness of guilt, 
— this lofty and profound exhibition it was which fascinated 
our attention through five acts, and left us, at last, breathless 
with interest. Who does not feel, in reading Shakspeare, that 
the un^vritten part of the character is a vastly larger part than 
the written ? That there exist between the speeches vast in- 
tervals of passions, which nothing but Shakspeare's own genius 
could entirely fill up, and that only in folios of moral metaphy- 
sics ? It is this unwritten portion of the character which Mr. 
Macready give us. His acting fills up these chasms, and is the 
complement of the worded part ; he not merely tells us what 
Macbeth thought when he spoke, but shows us all he felt before 
he spoke. Other actors enact the character by reciting the 
words. Mr. Macready illustrates the words by displaying the 
character. They start from the language that is set down, and 
work inwards to the character as far as they can ; he starts from 
the soul of the person he is representing, and works outward to 
the language, modifying its impression by a knowledge of its 
cause. If you would know what such or such words mean, 
when their meaning is brought out in the most effective way 
possible, these actors are your men. If you would learn what 
Macbeth meant by speaking those words, and why he spoke 
them, Mr. Macready must be your oracle. They detach the 
speech from the character and deliver it with all the grace and 
power of elocution ; they are orators ; attitudinizers. Mr. 
Macready is nothing of these — he is nothing but Macbeth. 
Doubtless, elocution and attitude are very valuable qualities, 
and to make Macbeth a series of reading lessons, and the stage 
a succession of tableaux vivans, is a very fine exhibition. But 
it is not enacting the character, or, if it be, it is not Mr. Ma- 
cready's method of acting it ; and without suggesting any thing 
unfavorable to others, we take leave to say that Mr. Macready's 
method is, to us, a very agreeable method. We take leave also 



^TAT. 30.] MR. MACREADY. 445 

to think, that Shakspeare's dramas are those which, beyond all 
others, require that ilhistrative and supplementary style of act- 
ing which Mr. Macready employs : not that Shakspeare's per- 
sonages talk less than those of other dramatists, but that they 
obviously think and feel a great deal more. We are willing to 
admit, that if Mr. Macready had the countenance of Conway? 
or the limbs of Hamblin, he would have — something which he 
has not now. He does not command the senses ; he does not 
strike and overawe the fancy by the flashes of imposing form. 
He addresses the imagination and intellect. Let the reader be 
pleased to turn to that essay of Lamb's which we have referred 
to above, and he will understand what we mean by saying, that 
to witness the performance of this great actor is, to us, like 
7-eading Shakspeare, gifted, for the nonce, with powers of per- 
ception to see all that Shakspeare meant but has not expressed. 
This profound style of explication is very exacting, and perhaps 
at last fatigues. Perhaps, too, this actor's moral analysis, 
always subtle, is sometimes morbid. But take the whole to- 
gether, and we venture to utter our opinion : that the tragedy 
of Macbeth, performed by Mr. Macready, is the highest of dra- 
matic enjoyments. 

The character of Macbeth is a great psychological study. It 
appears to have been a favorite opinion with Shakspeare, that 
evil is not spontaneous in the heart of man, but that it results 
from good qualities acted on by perverting circumstances ; and 
that that sort of vice which is active and ferocious, is commonly 
generated of feelings too intensely sensitive to abide the whips 
and stings of life, which at length torture them into the moral 
madness of wickedness. It may be said that the heartless 
Richard, " born with teeth," does not bear out this assertion ; 
but turn to that astonishing soliloquy of the guilty king, when 
he starts from his dreadful dream, and hear the sharpest cry of 
anguish that bursts from that self-confessional — 

" There is no creature loves me ; 
And, if I die, no soul will pity me ! — " 

This volcano of the soul gives us to see, by one glimpse, how 
38 



446 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 30. 

the ardors of love once burned in the bosom of that unhappy 
deformed ; and that the thick incrustation of hate, which had so 
long hardened over the surface, was only affection chilled into 
its opposite by the cold scoffings of the world. But in Richard, 
this hardening process was complete before he appears upon the 
stage — in Macbeth it all goes forward upon the scene. Mr. 
Macready enables us to see, in this character, a consistence and 
unity which we had not perceived before, and we shall very 
briefly give the view of this character which we understand that 
gentleman to have embodied. 

Macbeth is obviously a person of very sensitive feelings, and, 
at the same time, of highly excitable fancy. We may remark, 
in passing, that such a combination must often produce the re- 
sults of cowardice, and such Macbeth does certainly often ex- 
hibit. When he first appears before us, his breast is free from 
sin. His imagination is soon intensely excited by the vision 
opened before him by that " supernatural soliciting" which 
" cannot be ill ;" and the first scene shows us how unhappy he 
was made by the struggle between ambition and virtue. After- 
wards, reviewing the excellence of Duncan, and anxious to 
cling to that place in the affections of his fellows which he had 
so honorably won in war, he resolves to abandon all thoughts of 
the murder. But it is his fate to be linked to a woman whose 
despotic nature and commanding intellect give her a natural 
ascendant over him. She reproaches him with wavering, with 
want of love, with abject cowardice, with breach of his oath. 
Too feeble in mind to control her, and too susceptible in feeling 
to be insensible to these sarcasms, he is stung and maddened by 
these taunts, and his nature recovers, by an enforced cruelty of 
heart, that place in its own self-esteem which the vigor of the 
principles could not vindicate. But it is all effort : 

" I am settled, and bend up 
Each corporeal agent to this terrible feat." 

The act being done, he is a prey to all the anguish of re- 
morse ; his whole being is convulsed and agonized. But mark 
what justice it is "the self-condemned deals on his own soul." 



^TAT. 30.] MR. MACREADY. 44^ 

Remorse is the natural pain resulting from inconsistency be- 
tween one's principles and one's acts. If the acts be past and 
irreparable, this inconsistency can only be removed by assuming 
principles which agree with those acts, and make the man no 
longer at conflict with himself. When the agony of that self- 
contradiction becomes unbearable, to this the victim is forced, 
and with Satan he exclaims — "Evil, be thou my good !" He 
hardens himself in wickedness, and that penetrable stuff, con- 
science, whose piercing had given such pain, is expelled from 
his bosom. In Macbeth, this transition takes place near the 
close of the third act. After the terror and disgrace of the 
exposure of the feast, he sits down to contemplate his position, 
and the lost condition of his soul is forced upon him : 

" I am in blood 
Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er." 

And then he excuses himself to his wife for the exposure at the 
banquet, by promises of braver behavior for the future : 

" My strange and self-abuse 
Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use : — 
We are but young indeed." 

This is the cardinal scene of the play — the hinge on which 
the soul of the sufferer swings round "from soft to stern." 
Thereafter, Macbeth is a different being ; hard, composed, and 
terribly consistent. This process of moral transmutation it is, 
which, as we suppose, constitutes the main interest of the play ; 
and this it is which Mr. Macready sets himself to illustrate. In 
the earlier acts, his manner is that of a man whose soul totters 
beneath the weight that is laid upon it ; we have the irresolu- 
tion, the lapses or trances of the thoughts, the regret, the whine, 
of one whose spirit, still meanly clinging to that humanness of 
feeling from which its acts have forever cut it oif, is trampled upon 
and goaded by its own fiercer thoughts and passions, and is the 
living victim of its own self-gendered serpents. In the ghost- 
scene at the supper-table, which is perhaps the finest part of his 



448 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

performance, Mr. Macready exhibits Macbeth as suffering in- 
tensely, agonized in mind and heart under the maddening con- 
sciousness that this fixed, unmoviug image of horror, is the 
creation of his own brain, and that he is smitten down and 
abased before his own being, and that one-half his nature has 
become a devil to persecute the other half. Then follows the 
hardening of the heart, the stopping up of all " access and pas- 
sage of remorse," the petrifying of the spirit, as it turns to 
gaze boldly on the Gorgon countenance of guilt. Here, the 
voice of the actor changes — his manner for the future is decided 
and firm ; from the slave, he has become the hero of wicked- 
ness. In the three first acts, almost as sensitive as Hamlet, in 
the two last, he is almost as ruthless as Richard. Yet still, his 
ferocity is very distinguishable from " the hardness by long ha- 
bitude produced" of the misshapen son of York. His vigor is 
passion ; his severity is impulse ; his courage is the frenzy of 
shame. To the last, through the rings of the steel-armor of 
sternness with which he has encased his breast, you catch a 
glimpse of the same susceptible, excitable, quick spirit, which, 
in the morning of his days, had made his appreciation of virtue 
so intensely keen, and his sense of the departure from it so 
fierce an anguish. 

On the whole, we look upon Macbeth as a character scarcely 
less complicated and subtle than Hamlet, and the study of it as 
one of the finest employments and pleasures of the thoughtful 
mind ; and we confidently accord to Mr. Macready the praise 
of having apprehended, distinguished and illustrated this fine 
combination and progress of passions in an able and brilliant 
manner. 



MRS. ELLEN KEAN. 

There is an order of women who, from their first approach, 
fix the admiration of our minds, and, after the longest familiarity, 
have failed to wake one response from the sentiments : there is 
another class, whose presence is a witchery of people's hearts, 
inductive of an enchantment which the understanding vainly en- 



^TAT. 28.] MRS. ELLEN KEAN. 449 

deavors to explain to itself : but it is only the Mrs. Keans of life 
and art to whom it is given at once to charm and be approved, 
— first to fascinate and then to be admired ; — who, at the same 
time, kindle the fine resentments of the enthusiasm, and satisfy 
the searching skepticisms of the judgment ; whose effect is both 
a mystery and a reason. If we were to give utterance only to 
the undefined feelings of delight which rise spontaneous to her 
coming, and attend the progress of the scene, we should convey 
a wrong impression as to the particular and high character 
which we suppose to belong to her as a professional artist : 
and if we dwell upon the peculiar and rare attainments in 
technical or mechanical skill, which, obviously enough to us, 
contribute largely to the effect, we offer violence to the nice in- 
stincts of the heart which assert a higher influence than examina- 
tion can account for, and are more disposed to worship than to 
analyze. Her voice, her countenance, her motions, upon her 
earliest appearance, are in tone with our conceptions of the ideal 
in elegance and beauty, and pleasure antedates consideration : 
but her more intellectual and acquired powers hasten to vindi- 
cate and justify the foregone homage which she has snatched 
from our bosoms, eager to testify to us, that the light of fasci- 
nation w^iich played so tremblingly before her was not, like the 
nightly flickerings of the north, causeless and fading, but, like 
the messenger ray of the morning, the growing promise of a 
more palpable and continuing brightness : and we thus have the 
double interest of being enraptured, and of knowing that it is 
right that we should be enraptured. We can easily reconcile 
the two points of view, of nature and science, in our own mind, 
but cannot so readily explain their consistency to others. For 
ourselves, we have no conception of inspiration except as a more 
extended and more exquisite rationality. We look on genius 
as only a more subtle, intense, and rapid kind of sense. But, 
after we have explained all the mechanical and chymical and 
vital elements that constitute humanity, we have yet imparted no 
just notion of a man : and when we have explained the talent 
and acquirements of the performer, we have given no sufficient 
view of the excellent merits of the performance. In both 



JtoU DRAJTATIC CRITICISMS. [^Etat. 28. 

the power which is the result of many components is as entire, 
instinctive, and natural, as the components are varied and cu- 
rious ; and the effect must still be described by epithets not re- 
ferring to its causes. 

Mrs. Kean is obviously in possession of some of the most un- 
usual and difficult accomplishments of the stage. When the 
curtain rises upon a play, the object proposed is, not the pro- 
nouncing of some speeches, or the display of certain gestures, 
but the acting of a scene. The elements of the scene in words 
and motions, are of course given by the author : but much of 
the crystalizing power which shall group these into the intended 
form — the vital energy which is to associate them into an organ- 
ization — must come from the actors ; and chiefly from the 
leading actor. To combine the several sayings and doings which 
are set down by the poet, into the unity of a single joint action, 
is, we take it, the true problem of the boards. In real life, if 
two people, or half a dozen of them, come together in some ani- 
mated encounter of passion, pleasui*e, business, mirth or anger, 
their separate acts and words interlink with, and re-act upon, 
one another, so as to develop one entire impression and effect. 
The capacity of realizing this result, in himself, and in others, 
by the effect which he has upon them, is the master faculty of 
the tragedian ; the one central, essential characteristic of the 
profession, to which all other talents, graces, and attainments, 
of any sort or degree whatsoever, are secondary and collateral. 
Mr. Macready, we must admit, had this great quality beyond 
any one whom we have ever seen upon the stage ; and certain 
parts of " Hamlet" and " The Bridal" seemed to us to bring out 
in him the perfection of acting. Second to Mr. Macready only, 
among men, — and before any woman of this time — Mrs. Kean 
stands eminent in the possession of this queen virtue of her art. 
There is another talent kindred to this, but exhibiting itself 
rather where a single performer predominates in the scene, than 
when several parts are equally considerable ; it is that of pro- 
perly emphasizing the different actions and speeches which are 
to be delivered, — fore-shortening the different portions of the 
scene, in accordance with the perspective in which they are to 



^TAT. 28.] MRS. ELLEN KEAN. 45I 

be seen with other parts — throwing the proper light and shade 
upon the picture by the degrees of prominence given to dif- 
ferent positions. The blacli and white of the printed play give 
no hint of these delicacies of real existence : there all is mono- 
tone : the lightest passages are not distinguished from those 
which are to be dwelt upon and made to ring again. All this 
must come from the intelligence and taste of the actor ; what 
speeches are to be flung impatiently from the lips, and spoken 
quite by the by, and what are to be deliberately and fully uttered 
— what movements ought to escape the notice of the audience, 
and what should strike and detain it ; — this unwritten part of 
the play, larger and more important than that which is " set down, " 
must be the performer's contribution. In this respect Mrs. Kean's 
felicity is beyond any one we have seen. Mr. Macready is, in- 
this particular, her inferior. He occasionally lacked delicacy ; 
the iron of his weighty manner sometimes entered into the soul 
of the passage, and killed it. The brilliant and refined effects 
accomplished by this means, in the performances of Mrs. Kean, 
it is scarcely possible to overstate. It imparts the charm of 
a glowing and fine original, to the most hackneyed plays. In 
her it seems less to be the result of study and taste, than the 
effect of a highly vivid imaginative faculty, idealizing the scene 
before her, as she advances. But the suggestions of the strongest 
imagination could be availed of, for attaining such rich and just 
impressions, only by a judgment of the truest delicacy, and a feli- 
city of manner singularly various. 

Beyond question, Mrs. Ellen Kean is the first actress of the 
present day. Since Mrs. Butler, she has had no rival. These 
two great performers we need not contrast. They were equal, 
)jut extremely dissimilar. We entertain the hope of seeing Mrs. 
Butler again upon the stage. The two, alike in grandeur, as 
unlike in nature, may move in freedom in their several spheres — 
the eagle and the swan ; and neither moult one feather. 

MRS. KEAN IN "AS YOU LIKE IT." 

The most graceful, the most imaginative, the most delicate 
actress of moderate times, appeared in the character of Rosa- 



452 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^tat. 2». 

LiND, for the first time, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, in Philadel- 
phia, on Friday last, September 19th, 1845. The house was full, 
and the performance was attended to throughout with the most 
animated interest and delight. At the close of the piece, in ac- 
knowledgment of the protracted and enthusiastic applauses of 
the audience, Mrs. Kean, conducted by her husband, came out 
in front of the curtain, where bouquets and wreaths of flowers 
were showered upon her. In our opinion, the present genera- 
tion is hardly likely to see a more just illustration of the refined 
and frolic spirit of one of the most exquisite and characteristic 
of the female creations of Shakspeare ; and surely will not wit- 
ness, in finer completeness, that combination of selected excel- 
lencies, in aspect and demeanor, of 

Cleopatra's majesty, 
Atalanta's better part, 
Sad Lucretia's modesty, 

which in Rosalind ought to be exhibited to the eye of the spec- 
tator, that the mental qualities of the original may be perfectly 
apprehended. For ourselves, we were, simply, enchanted. The 
recollection of " the arms sublime that floated on the air," — the 
gliding, liquid movements — the light and springing tread — the 
quick yet soft transition, wave-like, from thoughtfulness to sport, 
from mirth to majesty of temper — the grandeur, just melting 
into voluptuousness, of the arched and swan-like neck, the 
yielding attitude, the speaking eye — comes to us now like a 
strain of rich, soft music. Dignity joined with grace, is the 
true characteristic of this fascinating performer ; in whose dis- 
plays, grace often becomes gayety, and dignity never verges upon 
stiffness. Her action seems to be taking place within a visible 
atmosphere of grace ; to exhale and throw off, as it were, a halo 
of sparkling elegance. An ethereal delicacy gives a charm to 
every motion, and an influence to every word and look. A cap- 
tivating simplicity seems to prompt each thought, and a spon- 
taneous loveliness to crown every effort. Her sportiveness is 
the wayward, yet vain, endeavor of a gleesome spirit to escape 
from its own inherent and inevitable gracefulness. Grace is the 



/Etat. 28.] MRS. ELLEN KEAN. 453 

condition of her being ; like lustre to a star. In laughter, and 
in tears, and in the more delicious union of the two, — in move- 
ment and in rest — in pensive sentiment and swift-glancing re- 
partee — in all that she does, and all that she is — the attribute is, 
grace — still grace. 

In the romantic class of Shakspeare's female characters, — ■ 
Portia, Beatrice, Rosalind, we would add Miranda, — Mrs. Kean's 
supremacy is as absolute and exclusive as Mrs. Butler's special 
adaptation is unquestionable to the passionate order of the same 
author's conceptions, — Juliet, Constance, Lady Macbeth. The 
two sorts of creations are distinguished by the same qualities 
which peculiarize the two performers ; the characteristic of one 
being imagination, of the other, emotion. "With regard to 
that kind of comedy, so essentially Shakspearian, which is at 
once familiar and highly ideal, natural and poetical, in which 
social interests and ordinary scenes are exhibited to us through 
a heightening and refining veil of fancy, — Mrs. Kean seems to 
be native to the element. On the other hand, of the visionary 
realm of pathos and of passion, Mrs. Butler is the undoubted 
queen. The styles of the two are widely apart. Mrs. Butler's 
exhibition of a character was a brilliant succession of occasional 
effects ; a series of intense and splendid impressions. It was a 
manner highly emphasized ; in which ordinary scenes were past 
lightly over, in order to concentrate an irresistible power upon 
passages and situations capable of extraordinary expressiveness. 
In Mrs. Kean's pei'sonations, that genius which was accumu- 
lated upon separate points, is diffused over the whole exhibi- 
tion. Her style is elevated, sustained and equable. If you are 
not agitated and astonished by the wonderful exhibition of 
parts, you are interested and gratified by the general excellence 
of all. If Mrs. Kean has less force, she has more delicacy ; if 
the feelings are less morbidly engaged, the taste is more uni- 
formly pleased and improved. In any of her performances, she 
may be said to have but one brilliant scene ; but that is the 
whole. 



454 DRAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

MR. KEAN'S OTHELLO. 

At the Chestnut Street Theatre, kist night, October 30th, 
1845, we saw the master-piece of the English stage — the greatest 
dramatic production of the world. Under the guidance of Mr. 
Kean, and his more delightful wife, we watched the development 
of that immortal scene, which, familiar in its rise, natural in its 
progress, and piteous in its close, engages the sympathies, one 
after another, until the total being of the spectator is absorbed 
in the event ; were enchained by the weird influences of that 
Fate, shadowy and sublime, which, springing from an ill-assorted 
union, impels the hapless pair, consciously, yet uncontrollably, to 
destruction, making the kindliest feelings of one her betrayers, 
and the noblest passions of the other, the authors of their com- 
mon ruin ; and were profoundly interested by those contending 
storms of emotion, which rage together for a while in the bosom 
of the Moor, like opposing tempests on the Caspian Sea, till 
they burst in the ruin of his happiness, his fortune, his honor, 
his life, and his soul. It is no mean praise to sustain such a 
character in any way ; to satisfy the observer, in its perform- 
ance, is, undoubtedly, to win the highest honors of the stage. 

Mr. Kean did an injury to his just pretensions by making his 
first appearances in Philadelphia, in comic parts. His Don Felix, 
and Benedick, had, of course, very many meritorious qualities ; 
yet, substantially, and in respect of the essential requisites of 
the performance, they were, comparatively, failures : they dis- 
played taste and talent and study, yet, on the whole, they were 
from the purpose of the plays. In fact, all that there is about 
him is of tragic build : he carries such weight of metal, as 
sinks the light crafts of comedy. We missed his Hamlet : in 
Othello, we saw him, for the first time, in his native proportions 
and true character. In the lowlands of gayety and mirth, he 
had appeared to feel the constraint and awkwardness of a false 
position and a borrowed title ; but his first movement in the 
Moor seemed to declare " My name is MacGregor." We have 
been wont to think Mr. Macready's Othello the greatest his- 
trionic exhibition that we had witnessed ; we are now satis- 



^TAT. 28.] MR. KEAN'S OTHELLO. 455 

fied, after a close consideration of Mr. Kean's, that Macready 
had given us some erroneous views of some of the characters of 
the play, and of the agency by which the catastrophe is worked 
out ; or rather, to be candid, had confirmed certain wrong im- 
pressions which our own thoughts had long before suggested to 
us ; impressions, we mean, unfavorable to the delicacy and per- 
fect integrity of Desdemona's character. The resistless grace 
of Mrs. Kean's simplicity and frankness, soon set us right upon 
this point : the majesty of her " I am your wife, my lord : — 
your true and loyal wife," scattered and swept away the last 
remnants of doubt ; and at the feet of her " His unkindness 
may defeat my life, but never taint my love," we beg permission 
to recant and unsay all heresies in any wise impairing the spot- 
less and angelic nature of the "gentle lady." Mr. Kean made 
the action of the piece turn chiefly upon the peculiar organiza- 
tion and temperament of the Moor, as the child of a different 
and lower race ; honorable from conscious rank, controlled and 
mild through the necessities of official position, yet essentially 
dull of intellect, . . . astute enough, but lacking strong coura- 
geous sense . . . and capable, by the operation of the passions, 
of being transformed back to his original turbulence and wild- 
ness. The moral influence of this conscious inferiority, as lead- 
ing easily to suspicion, jealousy, distrust and subjection to the 
guidance of others, is easily comprehended : but Mr. Kean 
brought out, in a distinctness we had never before seen, the 
physical or physiological operation of these natural peculiarities 
of race and nation. — When lago brings his infernal machinery 
to bear upon him, you are less impressed, in following Mr. 
Kean's conceptions with the varying progress of opinion, in 
Othello, than in the utter change of nature that takes place : 
the slumbering sympathies of a savage origin are reawakened 
within him. We feel how significantly his sagacious lieutenant 
had characterized him, at the opening of the play, as a " bar- 
barian." He is passion-struck: the intellect has sunk; the 
blind, mad instincts of animal fury are roused in this drunken- 
ness of the feelings. You are no longer in company with a 
civilized and educated man : the savage is before you, in all the 



456 DKAMATIC CRITICISMS. [^tat. 28. 

wild and crested turbulence of native ferocity. His nature falls 
at once below that of bis intellectual companion : be reverences 
and follows tbe mental lead of lago, as a savage worships his 
Fetiche. In carrying out this striking and fine conception, tbe 
surprise and awe with which Mr. Kean makes Othello turn to 
look at lago when he begins to pray beside him, were electrify- 
ing. The readiness with which he gives up his own intention 
and adopts lago's advice, as to the method of putting his wife 
to death, was exhibited as belonging to the childishness and 
Aveakness of a fallen and degraded understanding. When, in 
the later acts the storm has subsided, and honor, justice, self- 
control, and, with them, reason, have returned, the foregone con- 
clusion of the passions is too deeply seated to be shaken : the 
fact of guilt has been settled in a mind, too resolute, now, to 
re-examine the grounds of belief, and the conduct that follows 
is such as any man, absolutely persuaded of his opinion, might 
adopt. 

Such is the impression which Mr. Kean gives us of Othello ; 
to us it is, in part, new, and it is certainly ingenious, reasonable, 
and in the highest degree effective. Were we required to say 
what passages appeared to us to be particularly striking, we 
should indicate the whole of the scene in which intelligence is 
brought to Othello of his recall to Venice, and Cassio's appoint- 
ment in his stead — the exclamation to Emelia, 

" She's like a liar gone to burning hell ; 
'Twas I that killed her;" 

and the "Farewell" speech, which we heard pronounced, as we 
are very sure it has not been since the death of the elder Kean ; 
the last line, " Othello's occupation's gone," in which each suc- 
cessive word seemed to echo from a profounder abyss of gloom 
and despair, was admirable. But brilliant parts cannot make a 
great whole, and little special decorations of manner do not 
constitute a grand personation : the one, conclusive question 
still remains — did the performance give truer and clearer views 
of the character, and render the entire play more probable, 



iBTAT. 28.] MR. KEAN'S OTHELLO. 457 

more consistent, and of a higher intellectual interest ? In view 
of this test, we give to Mr. Kean's Othello our full approbation. 
We may express, in conclusion, the satisfaction we have in 
seeing that Mr. and Mrs. Kean have rendered the theatre, once 
more, the resort of the class called "fashionable," and that, in 
the revival of the Shaksperian drama, the circus and the pan- 
tomine and the ballet are falling into discredit. Without affirm- 
ing that the moral influence of the drama is ever of the highest 
kind, we yet think that as counteracting the natural tendency 
of fashion, which with us, especially, is to the lower grade of 
exhibitions, the regular drama, in promoting refined taste in a 
community, and in elevating the subjects of social concern, and 
the topic of conversation in the drawing-room, exercises an in- 
fluence friendly rather than otherwise, to purity and virtue. 



39 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX A.— See Ante, p. 66. 

Protocol of a Constitution of a Society for the publication of Letters and 
other Documents of the War of the Kevolution — to be incorporated under 
the title of " Contributors to the John Marshall Fund, for the printing of 
Letters and other Writings of the War of the Revolution." 

OBJECTS AND PLAN. 

The purpose of this Society is, the publication of Original correspondence, 
and other writings, relating to the Revolution of 1776, and bearing date be- 
tween the first meeting of the Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, in 1775, 
and the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789. It is not intended to 
form a collection of MSS., but to effect the printing and publishing of MSS. 
remaining in the possession of private persons, and of societies. MSS. pre- 
sented to this association, shall bo handed over to such of the Historical So- 
cieties of the States, as shall agree to place MSS. in their possession, at the 
disposal of this Fund for publication. Persons having papers of importance 
which have not been printed, shall be invited to allow such papers to be pub- 
lished. If entrusted to this Society, they shall in all cases be immediately 
copied, and be printed from the copies, and the Society engages to return 
promptly to the owners, without injury, the originals of all papers thus en- 
trusted to them : or if the proprietors choose to part with the originals, they 
shall be deposited in such one of the State Historical Societies, acceding to 
the agreement above stated, as shall be deemed most appropriate. Persons 
not willing to entrust papers to the Society for the purpose of being copied 
for publication, shall be requested to furnish copies, or allow copies to be made 
in their own possession by agents of the Society. But no papers shall be printed 
but with a certificate by some person of character, that such copies are entire 
and accurate, and with a reference to the person or society in whose possession 
the original is. 

The labors of the Society shall also be directed to the ascertaining of what 
letters and documents of the Revolution have heretofore been printed, and to 
the facilitating of reference to them, by the compilation of Classified Indexes 
of Letters, Ac, in which such Letters, <&c., shall be arranged according to 
their subjects and dates, and their contents briefly described, so as to bring 
them readily under the view of the students of history. 

(458) 



APPENDIX. 
ORGANIZATION. 



459 



The officers of the Society shall consist of a President, four Vice-Presidents, 
thirty Managers, a S^mding Committee of Publication consisting of nine per- 
sons, a Secretary and Treasurer. The officers at the time of the organization 
of the Society shall be the following persons : 
President — Daniel AVebster. 
Vice-Presidents — John Quincy Adams, James Kent, Albert Gallatin, ? 



^ New England. 
Dr. Warren, 
Josiah Quincy, 
The representative of 
Artemas Ward. 
[Seven more.] 



managers. 
N. York and Philadelphia. 
Hon. John Duer, 
John C. Hamilton, 
Charles King, 
Joseph R. Ingersoll, 
John Penington, 
J. F. Fisher. 

[Four more,] 

STANDING COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 



The South. 
Dr. Moultrie. 

Middleton, 

Mitchell King, Charleston, 
Dr. Stevens, Augusta. 
[Seven more.] 



Philadelphia. 
William B. Reed, 
Edward D. Ingraham, 
H. B, Wallace. 



JVew York. 
John McVickar, 
George Gibbs, 
George Bartlett. 



Jarod Sparks, 



R. H. Dana, Jr. 



Secretary, 



-, Treasurer. 



BY-LAWS. 



All persons, not corporations, shall become members by subscribing annually 
five dollars ; but no one who has once subscribed shall cease to be a member, 
or to be liable to the payment of five dollars annually, unless before the end of 
the year he gives notice in writing of his withdrawal. Subscribers shall be 
entitled to receive a copy of every book and engraving published by the Fund 
during the year. Subscribers paying eight dollars a year shall receive copies 
of books on large paper, and India proofs of engravings. Cof.iorations and 
governments may become subscribers, but shall not be members. 

The President shall summon a general meeting of the members to be held 
at New York, whenever he is requested to do so by a majority of the managers. 

The Managers and other officers shall meet at New York, on the 1st Monday 
in September of every year. Vacancies which have occurred in the Board of 
Officers during the previous year, shall be supplied by an election by ballot, 
from the members of the Society. Any members of the Board of Officers may 
be removed by a general meeting of the members, called as above provided, 
and others elected in their room. 

The Standing Committee of Publication shall consist of nine persons, of 
whom three shall be residents of Philadelphia, three of N^w York, and three 



400 APPENDIX. 

cf Boston. Vacancies occurring shall be filled by the committee from the 
members of the Society : but the Board of oflBcers at their annual meeting, 
may remove any members of the committee and elect others in their room- 
This committee shall be the Supreme Council and Executive Board of the So- 
ciety, in the intervals between the annual meetings of the Board of Managers ; 
and shall have authority to dispose of funds, enter into contracts, and transact 
all business on the part of the Society. 

A statement of the proceedings of the Standing Committee of Publication 
shall be read at the annual meeting of the Board of OflBcers, and printed. 

At the annual meeting an address shall be delivered publicly by the Presi- 
dent, or some one appointed by the Board of Officers at their previous annual 
meeting. 

The Society shall print annually three volumes, and one engraving from 
some portrait, not before engraved, of a person eminent in the War of the 
Revolution. 

Every volume printed by the Society shall be carefully edited by one or 
more persons, selected by the Committee of Publication. 

Persons conferring important benefiits upon the Society by the communica- 
tion of original papers for publication, may be elected honorary members of 
the Society, by the Standing Committee of Publication, and their names shall 
be printed in the annual statements. 



H 13 89 













^^^^•x 

•■^v^*" '^m-' \ 
•^ / 







!?-*. 









^°-V^. - 






V-^'-/\,..V- 



^*-..^*' .-^^^SC^'.^ 









^* <.^" 



^^-^^^ 









•- '^bv^ 



^^-'^^ V 












^^* 






.^J^ 



5-* 



o. 'o , » • A 



^/ 4.^ -^.^ 




^% 






..^\*:iJk:.V .^^^!ri^/^.. .>^i^*X 



'i* .^^^ o. 






"^n cV 






> '^^ A^ 



^-. 



















o V 



'J-^ <^ -0 



^^-^K 






%/ 

^^"^< 






"W* 
/.^^'\-- 



0^ '°^^*^''-° /«:^Xo^ ^^'^' X 



iP-'*.. V 







(:■%/■' * 






^' \^<^^ :* 



0-' 
0^ •!• 



'*• .^^V IWM^: .♦^^♦^ -. 










'^^ *•.-.,• 
>*-. 







^^^^^ 



^^, 



•* "^ 









lO^ •1*^'. V' 






" '^ A^ H 

'7 «>>■. o 






0^.^ 










^^^. 







'*^ — -* ^'^ '^ •'■• -iV .. 









• A 



V 



^ oo-"* 






♦• /% •: 



^^ * 




* •& 



0^ r" 






>^ o-"*-* 



* *^ 






\^ .^ 












^^'*:i5k:/''^ 



o^. *•«<>' ^0 



•"^ •!.•»- 



♦ - . . • 












HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. |§| 

.^^^ DEC 88 











iO. 



^!^^ N.MANCHESTER, 'X A . » ' • i> ^ A^ . t < 

^=^*^ INDIANA 46962 I ' , "^ ^ ^V t*dft(r>^*. <6 4,'' » * tf 



